


Vine de Nada

by thedevilspunchbowl304i23049i2



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Gang Rape, Graphic Description, Implied/Referenced, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Imprisonment, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Torture, Wrongful Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:40:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 11
Words: 40,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24939961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilspunchbowl304i23049i2/pseuds/thedevilspunchbowl304i23049i2
Summary: Louis had never been to a show before. It’d taken years for his father to finally coax him into attending a match. The arena was built from the ground up, the stone walls sufficiently blocking out the natural light of the moon and stars in the sky, the natural bite of the chilly wind outside. The stage, if it could be called that, was a pit, carved out several feet into the ground. It gave the audience a sort of advantage, of watching the fight beneath them, staring down at the two men in the cage, as if this were a harmless zoo.Or: The one where Harry has been sentenced to fight as a gladiator in the arena until he dies after being found guilty for a crime he never committed, and Louis is the lawyer that decides to risk his career to prove his innocence.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Comments: 33
Kudos: 63





	1. Career Suicide

Louis had never been to a show before. It’d taken years for his father to finally coax him into attending a match. The arena was built from the ground up, the stone walls sufficiently blocking out the natural light of the moon and stars in the sky, the natural bite of the chilly wind outside. The stage, if it could be called that, was a pit, carved out several feet into the ground. It gave the audience a sort of advantage, of watching the fight beneath them, staring down at the two men in the cage, as if this were a harmless zoo. 

There wasn’t much to the pit. The walls were smooth stone, rather than dirt, to alleviate any chance of a prisoner escaping through will power alone. The floor was stone too; hard and unforgiving.

Louis wasn’t a fan. This arena has existed for as long as he could remember. It was a tradition, really. The only true form of entertainment. Once a month, there would be a fight, and the entirety of the town would trek out to come and watch it from their stadium seating. But Louis never attended. He couldn’t bridge that gap of disinterest, honestly. He couldn’t imagine how he could detach himself so completely from the situation, to find entertainment in watching two strangers fight each other to the death.

But his father had worn him down. This one was important. It was important because a prince had broken the law. And this was his punishment. Just one fight. Either he would die, or he would be forgiven. Usually, any royals who participated in this archaic battle participated for show - they were protected, and treated to a rare night of nonlethal battle. But not this time. 

Louis slouched low in his seat, watching the lit cage with something close to what he liked to imagine was somewhat believable disinterest, as his father chattered away to his business partners around Louis. Louis’s disinterest in that entire conversation was much more genuine. 

The crowd erupted in noise before the gate at the base of the pit had even fully opened. A boy was dragged out through it. Louis frowned. He didn’t know who was meant to fight this prince, but he knew what the prince looked like - they all did. And this boy was not him. The prince had had years of training in defense. All royalty did. Surely they didn’t mean to make a mockery of this event by pitting a grown, experienced man against a boy. 

The boy straightened up, and shoved his mop of hair out of his face. Even from here, his hair looked wet, and his cheeks looked flushed. The boy didn’t look scared, he looked annoyed. “Probably because he fought last month,” his father hummed quietly when Louis pointed this out to him. “I doubt he was scheduled to fight this month.”

“So they chose him to fight the prince on purpose?” Louis whispered back. “Why would they do that? He’s a child.”

His father scoffed. “I forget you hide yourself under a rock and pretend the world around you doesn’t exist,” he mused. “He’s hardly a child. Younger than you, sure, but of legal age - now. I’d clock him at nineteen, but he’s been a staple of the arena for a few years now. He was the child of a servant in their house. Practically raised by them, until he received his sentencing. I suspect they believe this to be poetic justice. Given that the prince himself condemned the boy. That’s Harold Styles.”

The crowd hushed around them, and then quickly erupted in loud, over the top jeering as the gate opened a second time. The Prince Grimshaw was not shoved into the pit. He strode into it on his own two feet, head held high, sword at his side. Louis frowned. Harry didn’t seem to have a weapon. 

Harry glanced warily toward Grimshaw as the gate clanged closed. Something seemed to pass between the two of them with just that look, because Grimshaw’s face shuttered closed into a mask of pure rage. He drew his sword and launched himself at Harry.

The boy was tall but thin, lanky; broad shouldered. Grimshaw was much more filled out, much more… physically fit. He looked like a soldier, a warrior. He moved like one too. Fast, efficient, his arm strong and sure. Harry threw himself to the side, the sword narrowly missing him. 

“Doesn’t seem fair,” Louis found himself telling his father.

“Never seems to be with that one,” his father agreed. “He definitely pissed off the wrong person.” His father shook his head. “But he better not choose today to lose because I’ve got money on him.”

Louis threw his father a dirty look and nearly missed the way Harry went lower, like a football player, and tackled Grimshaw straight off of his feet. The sword clattered away, and Harry dove for it. But Grimshaw was fast, his hand fisting in Harry’s damp hair, yanking the boy back hard enough to force a shout of pain out of him. Grimshaw reached past his outstretched hand, and closed his own around the hilt of his sword.

He brought the sword up to Harry’s throat and Louis held his breath as his father swore violently under his breath. Even Harry seemed to still. He looked small there, his head pulled back enough to force his back to arch slightly, to bare his throat.

And then Grimshaw decided to speak. At first it was low, his lips moving against Harry’s ear. Nobody could hear the prince, but a look crossed Harry’s face. He’d looked faintly annoyed the entire fight, but the look that passed over the boy’s face looked scared, maybe hurt. Harry’s lips moved, his own words faint, but much more audible, surprisingly deep. The only words he managed to get out before the sword pressed tighter against his throat was, “I didn’t hurt -” Louis could see blood beyond the press of the sword, beading up around the blade and rolling dully down the long column of Harry’s bared throat.

“Liar,” Grimshaw spat savagely. “I want an admission of guilt before I do the state’s job for them and dispose of this trash,” he seemed to spit out toward the audience. The audience seemed enraptured by the performance, but Louis couldn’t pay them much mind. He didn’t want to be here for this. This boy’s death. He didn’t want to see another prince get another pass at the expense of some peasant.

“I never touched her,” Harry forced out lowly. “I loved -”

Grimshaw silenced the boy by violently pulling his head back further. The blade at his throat nicked his skin, slicing across it shallowly. Harry hissed sharply through his teeth, grimacing. “Liar,” Grimshaw snarled. Louis held his breath, certain that Grimshaw would lose his patience and swipe the blade deeper across the boy’s throat, ending this mockery of a fight. But he didn’t. He shoved Harry away, pulling the blade free. He shoved Harry so hard that Harry fell forward, onto his hands and knees.

The boy had experience though. He didn’t dwell on his own confusion. He scampered away, climbing haphazardly to his feet and quickly putting distance between himself and Grimshaw. The crowd, which had decidedly not been on Grimshaw’s side at the start of this fight, broke out into loud jeers. They’d been as certain as Louis that there would be imminent bloodshed. Louis’ heart hammered against his ribcage at the realization. The crowd didn’t care whose blood was spilled. They would have been just as happy with this child’s as with Grimshaw’s. It didn’t matter who needed to be punished. 

From then on, Harry seemed intent on never finding himself close enough for Grimshaw to touch again. Every step forward, every aggressive swipe, Harry was quick to outpace. The crowd was growing restless, but Louis found himself more enraptured than he’d been the whole time, because this was fascinating. It almost looked like a well coordinated dance. Harry seemed to have an unending endurance. He was light on his feet, quickly dancing out of reach, no matter how close or how fast that reach approached him. He twisted and turned, and several times even flipped, over and beyond the touch of the blade. He seemed incapable of growing tired from the rapid movement, but Grimshaw was a different story. If Louis hadn’t been watching the fight so closely, he might have missed it.

It began as a few misplaced jabs that Harry easily evaded. But then Grimshaw swung in a wide arc that Harry barely had to step back from to be missed by it entirely. Grimshaw probably knew he was running on reserves; it’s probably why he decided to start talking. By the way Harry paused after every failed attempt, it became clear that Harry wasn’t going to take advantage of it. Not yet.

“You know, she left a note,” Grimshaw began, his voice echoing through the arena. “She’d drafted a list of her reasons for why she would commit such a treasonous act, such as taking her own life. The boy she’d raised as her own. The commoner with the sinful eyes he couldn’t keep to himself, and the wandering hands. The boy she feared would grow too big, too tall. Who would one day be strong enough to overpower her and take from her -”

“Stop,” Harry cut in. He’d come to a complete stop when he realized where this was going. “You’re lying.”

Grimshaw tilted his head. “Why do you think they were so quick to arrest you?” He asked logically.

“Because you told them to,” Harry spat out, his voice low and restrained. “Because it’s what you do to commoners. Toss them aside like trash. Use them to fill your entertainment halls.” Harry made a half aborted gesture with his hand toward the audience around them, but his gaze never left Grimshaw. Grimshaw was all he saw. “Fancy meeting you here. Like a commoner.” The malice in Harry’s voice didn’t reach the level of malice Grimshaw had used on him. Harry kept his voice low, his cadence slow, measured. 

Louis saw in Grimshaw’s gaze the same kind of incredulous anger any royal would hold when being spoken to like that by somebody beneath them. Harry didn’t sound angry or disgusted. He sounded disinterested, distantly amused. “You’re nothing but entertainment to your own people,” Harry told Grimshaw. His voice remained quiet, but the hall had grown so quiet that Harry’s deep voice carried. “And they’ll find your inevitable death just as entertaining as mine. In here, we are equal. My sins are the same as yours to these people. Nobody cares. Nobody will save you from me. In _here_ , with me, royalty doesn’t exist. You signed your own death warrant when you signed mine.” And then Harry smiled, and he moved so fast that if Louis had blinked, he would have missed the entire thing.

Harry lunged for Grimshaw, covering the short distance between them in two, very long strides. Grimshaw pulled back, and the roar of the crowd was deafening, because Grimshaw hadn’t been expecting it, and didn’t pull back fast enough. Harry hit him in the chest hard, with both knees, and they fell, Harry’s full weight driving the man down into the ground, beneath him. In between one startled gasp and the next, Harry reached for the man’s fallen sword and dragged the sharp edge of the blade across his throat, cutting with enough force that he nearly decapitated the man.

Then Harry tossed the blade aside and rose to his feet. He didn’t wait. This wasn’t a boxing match, where there was a winner and a loser, and the loser didn’t lose anything more than his dignity. Harry didn’t wait for the raucous cheering of the crowd to die down before he moved toward the gate he’d first entered through. He didn’t look happy, or grateful, or less afraid. Louis watched as the child walked toward that gate, like he’d been the one defeated, cloaked in the cheers of his audience.

After that, Louis didn’t go to the next fight. Or the one after that. Nothing much changed, really. Grimshaw hadn’t been a king. There were no real policy changes that rushed to improve or destroy the economy following his fall, which was likely why he’d even been sentenced to the arena. His death turned out to be wholly unmeaningful, really. Louis didn’t dwell on it. Every time his father extended him an invitation for a bit of entertainment, Louis politely declined, feigning the need to focus on his studies, or his girlfriend of the week, or his job. 

“The boy’s fighting tonight,” his father mentioned offhandedly, after managing to drag Louis out for dinner with him. “That Styles kid. First fight since Prince Grimshaw. Should be a good one.”

Louis frowned, picking at the roasted chicken his father had selected for them. “Oh? His last fight went so well, I’m surprised they waited two months to profit off of him again,” he said, trying to match his father’s feigned disinterest. 

“Apparently the boy made some noise about a rigged trial,” his father elaborated, eager to take advantage of Louis’s nonexistent disinterest. “Didn’t receive his due process, and all that. It’s not a bad angle. He was in lock up for close to eight months before anybody thought to call a judge. Honestly -”

“Eight months,” Louis interrupted. “Due process promises a fortnight. What could they have possibly needed -”

“Need is likely a strong word,” his father assured him. “The boy was accused of raping Grimshaw’s intended. Before she ever committed suicide. You don’t remember the trial, being out of state and all back then.” His father whistled. “By the time he was sat in front of a judge, this kid couldn’t answer a straight question if his life depended on it, which it did. It’s an honest surprise he’s survived this long in the arena, with the way they’d worked him over. The most shocking bit of this is that he didn’t suffer a brain injury. But then Grimshaw’s intended committed suicide in the middle of his trial and that just about sealed his fate.” His father shrugged. “Might have a fair bit of chance at this … if he had a lawyer. But nobody will touch the kid, not when he’s so profitable, not after he’s just killed a royal prince. That’d be career suicide…”

So Louis attended a second fight. He didn’t mean to, or want to. It followed in much the same as the first one he’d seen. Harry entered the arena first, dressed the same, with the same disinterested look on his face. His opponent was somebody Louis didn’t recognize, but he was big. He was a mountain of a man, twice Harry’s size, thick as a linebacker. This man was a proper gladiator. 

The fight lasted longer than the last one. The giant man had one very clear asset. He was unmoveable. Even when Harry abandoned his strategy and started making the first move - nothing shook the man. Even the hits that landed seemed to hurt Harry more than him. Harry was faster, but toward the end of the fight, when Harry went to duck and dodge, the man dropped his arm at the last second and practically tackled Harry to the ground with the full force of his weight. It looked painful. Lethal. 

Harry audibly gasped, and then the beast’s hands were around his throat, to force the rest of his air out of him. Harry thrashed beneath him, clawing at his face, punching at him, and the mountain of a man remained unmoved above him. Louis found himself holding his breath, squirming uncomfortably in his seat. He was still holding his breath when Harry pressed his thumbs against his opponents eyes until he blinded the man and the man finally released him with a scream. But Harry didn’t let go. He clung to the man, pressing his thumbs deep enough to gouge the man’s eyes out. After that, the fight got a lot more hectic. Harry couldn’t seem to get his full breath back, gasping and holding his chest, and his opponent couldn’t see anything, stumbling and aggressively swinging at air. 

At some point, a guard tossed two spears into the arena, and Harry finally shoved the sharp point into the giant of a man, which didn’t necessarily end the fight. Harry had failed to stab deep enough to do any real damage, and Harry had to stab him three more times before the man stopped trying to kill him. But even then, the guards refused to let Harry out of the cage until the man was dead, and Harry had to force himself back to his opponent to force the spear through the man’s neck. It took him three more times. By then, Harry could barely stay up right. He looked like he was having an asthma attack.

The fight was … it was bad. It was horribly unbalanced against Harry, and Harry looked exhausted. By the time he stumbled toward the gate, he was shaking and gasping audibly enough that Louis felt like he could still hear the boy, even through the crowd. Louis rose from his seat, and left, without another word to his father.

He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing. But at some point during the fight, he’d decided that this kid … this kid who fought so hard just to continue living, maybe he deserved somebody else to fight for him. Maybe he was worth career suicide. Maybe it was time Louis did something that actually mattered with his law degree.

After a more or less honest explanation, the security let Louis into the contraption beneath the arena. His father had a powerful position and a lot of pull, but the only pull that mattered to Louis was that the people in control here trusted him not to sneak in and attempt to kill their fighters. He was trusted enough to be allowed backstage, to wander down the winding corridors. He meant to find the boy’s room, or cell, he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know the rooming establishment for the prisoners down here.

Where he was directed to was a rudimentary infirmary instead. The room was large but bare. The only people in it, off to a far side was Harry, sat on a white bed, and a doctor in a lab coat, standing in front of him, running his fingers along Harry’s rapidly bruising throat. Louis hovered by the door, watching the boy grimace minutely. The doctor wasn’t exactly gentle about his touch, but Harry didn’t pull away from it. 

Harry saw him first, his gaze dragging toward the door and pinning Louis in place. Louis swallowed hard and forced himself to move. Harry watched him silently at first, but then the doctor pressed his throat too harshly and Harry flinched, closing his eyes, clearly losing interest in the purpose of this stranger coming to an infirmary he clearly didn’t need.

“Your windpipe appears to be intact,” the doctor surmised, his thick Irish accent catching Louis off guard. “Bit bruised. Good deal bruised, bloke almost crushed it. Cracked a few ribs on ya. I’ll put in a word. Keep you on the bench for a month or two, yeah? Just don’t let that inhaler out of your sight. Don’t let nobody see you with it either, yeah? You had a bit of a serious attack out there. Would be a fair bit shit outta luck if it gets confiscated, mate.” The man stepped back and startled when he noticed Louis standing there. “Oh, um, hello?” He asked uncertainly. “I don’t … I don’t remember any appointment? Can I um…?”

Clearly the infirmary didn’t get any visitors. Why would they? “I’m Louis Tomlinson. I would like to…uh.. I came to speak with your …. Harry,” he explained, sounding just about as uncertain as the doctor. “If that’s possible, please?”

The doctor frowned at him and then gestured toward Harry, who’s eyes were open again, staring straight at Louis. “Can’t tell you how great the kid will be at talking. But it’s not like he was exactly a proper conversationalist before.” The doctor shrugged and then stepped back. “Knock yourself out. Don’t tinker with the cuffs,” he added, and walked away.

Louis frowned and glanced back at Harry. That was when he noticed that Harry’s right wrist was handcuffed to the railing of the bed. He glanced from the boy’s wrist to the boy’s eyes, which remained steady on him. “I want to represent you, in court, as your lawyer,” Louis said without preamble.

Not a single thing changed in the boy’s face. Not at first. And then the boy licked his lips and opened his mouth and hesitated, as if he knew that talking would hurt. “Why,” was what he chose to say, and it sounded … wrecked. It sounded like the boy had swallowed razor blades and then vomited them back up.

Louis didn’t know the answer to that question. He couldn’t answer it for himself. “Because somebody should,” he finally said. “The way you fight..you fight like someone that plans on surviving it. And it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to survive the arena if you didn’t have to fight in it ever again.”

Harry was quiet again, just watching Louis. He watched for so long, Louis knew he was beginning to fidget and couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it. “Okay,” Harry decided to say eventually. Louis wasn’t sure if it was because the kid actually agreed with him, or if it was because the kid had decided that saying anything less concise would be too much effort and pain to give to a stranger that wasn’t actively trying to kill him.

Louis nodded. “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll be back. In two days. When you can talk better, we’ll talk, okay?”

Harry nodded now, just a slight dip of his head, his gaze unwavering and unnerving.

Louis forced himself to step away and turn and walk away, leaving the boy handcuffed to the bed.


	2. I loved her

True to his word, Louis returned to the arena two days following the fight. In the meantime, he filed the paperwork to be recognized as Harry Styles’ lawyer. It made getting into the arena a great deal easier. A security guard led him through the labyrinth of tunnels this time, straight to a stone door. The man unlocked the door for him, told him to be careful and locked the door back up again once he’d stepped through it. The room was small, with a bed, a toilet and not much else. He noted that it also felt chilly, but he couldn’t see a blanket or a pillow or anything that might offer some form of comfort. Harry was on his bed, shirtless, leaning back against the wall behind it, a hand pressed to his ribs when Louis came in. He didn’t move, but his gaze did focus in on him with that acute intensity that didn’t fail to make Louis feel uncomfortable.

The bruising around Harry’s throat had darkened considerably, into the very distinct shape of meaty fingers. “You can sit,” Harry croaked, and Louis startled. “Stop hovering at the door like you’re trapped in a cage with a fucking animal.” Harry’s voice sounded impossibly deeper, raspier, with the same trashed quality it’d had two days ago, but talking seemed to come to him easier now.

Louis swallowed hard. “Sorry,” he amended. “You just look ….”

“Like shit,” Harry supplied helpfully. “I’ve heard. Sit.”

Louis shifted forward and then, more awkward than he’d like to admit, slowly sat down on the edge of Harry’s bed. “I need…” he cleared his throat and then swallowed again. “I wasn’t familiar with your case before, the first time I saw you fight. If you could, I would like for you to explain what happened, from your point of view.”

Harry didn’t say anything for long enough that Louis turned to look at him, and found the boy just staring at him. Just as Louis considered repeating himself, Harry quietly murmured, “you were serious about trying to be my lawyer.”

“Of course,” Louis said immediately, even while he suspected that Harry had been speaking mostly to himself. “They kept you imprisoned without a trial for eight months. That’s basis enough for a retrial. Plus Lady Pierre’s suicide massively biased the jury. Something beyond your control made you look guilty. Grimshaw’s death, something beyond your control, might be enough to make you look innocent.”

“I am innocent,” Harry cut in harshly, his tone made harsher by the damage done to his throat.

“Of course,” Louis repeated, much gentler. “I wouldn’t have offered to represent you if I’d thought justice was already being served.”

That seemed to settle something in Harry a little. He tilted his head back against the wall, closing his eyes. “This is career suicide,” he rumbled quietly.

“You can die literally every month. I think my career will be fine in comparison, yeah?” Louis said dismissively, waving a hand just as dismissively. Then he lifted the pad he’d brought with him, as if to silently imply, _let’s get on with it now, yeah?_

Harry went back to staring at him quietly. “I know who you are. Your father. He matters. If -”

“I know who my father is,” Louis cut in, but his tone was still gentle. “It will benefit you. If he didn’t matter, you’d have no chance in hell. A prince of the royal family accused you of raping a lady. The fact that my father matters makes me matter. Me mattering and being your lawyer will make your case matter. It’ll get your case on the floor.”

“If you lose -”

“Nothing will have changed for you,” Louis interrupted again. He didn’t want to dwell on the possible repercussions of his actions in the event that he lost. Nothing would change for Harry, but if he lost, well then … his career would be dead. His father’s career would take a possibly lethal hit too. This was the life he was used to. His father had been a politician for his entire life. Louis didn’t matter in the greater span of things, but every action, every comment, reflected on his father, good or bad. He knew that. He knew how to navigate that world. He’d just never done something this dangerous before. But Harry had been seconds away from getting his windpipe crushed just days ago. Maybe Louis could handle a little political danger in light of the very real physical danger Harry was being subjected to. “But if I win. If you win. Then you live free from these walls. That’s worth it, isn’t it.”

Harry tried to shrug and then grimaced, his fingers tightening on his ribs. Beneath his fingers, Louis could see a mess of purple bruising. “We don’t have to do anything today,” Louis murmured. “You can tell me your story. And when I come back next, I’ll bring you a script. For something to take the edge off of your pain.”

Harry snorted and then grimaced again. “They don’t give convicts painkillers, Tomlinson,” he croaked. “I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re meant to be punished.”

Louis shrugged. “We’ll see,” he said optimistically. “I think you’ve been punished enough.”

Harry stayed quiet for a while; the expression on his face concentrated and focused purely on Louis. Louis maintained his eye contact patiently, letting Harry search for whatever he was looking for uninterrupted. Somehow, he imagined Harry wasn’t afforded that much. Just the time to process. Louis didn’t know what it was, but the boy must’ve found it, because finally, he opened his mouth to speak.

“My mother was a house servant,” he said quietly. “Not… Not an important one. She wasn’t the personal servant to the queen or anything. She was one of fifty, or something. We were … I mean, me and my sister, were born into servitude. She was a servant and my father was indentured. Grew up homeless and sold his freedom to get here. Thought he could do something with it after he served his time. Sold it to the King, and worked for the royal court. For fifteen years or something.” Harry had a slow, low cadence to the way he spoke, unhurried, half mumbled, as if he wasn’t used to his words mattering.

“Nobody cared. It wasn’t, like, forbidden or anything. When she - I mean my mum - had either of us. But they were busy. My father didn’t see us much. Nobody saw us much. We might as well of been born slaves. We were born into servitude. We didn’t receive schooling, didn’t leave the castle much, started doing chores when we could understand it, but never got paid for it or nothing. Suspected it was to cover the cost of our living there.”

“When I was ten, Lady Pierre moved in. She was Grimshaw’s intended. The courting took a while. Like he didn’t want to do it. She didn’t live with him. She had her own quarters, and she took a liking to me. Requested me as her personal servant. And since I didn't belong to nobody and nobody was paying me for anything, they gave me to her. Like an orphan she found on the street, a stray dog. She was…” Harry fell quiet here, and Louis tried to be patient here too. He watched the boy struggle to find a word that fit the situation. Finally, Harry settled on, “nice. I don’t know. It wasn’t like - the royal family could be kind, but it was different with her. There was no alternative. It made it less threatening. Like if you said her name in the wrong tone, she wouldn’t be tempted to publicly punish you, you know? She was just nice. It made things easier. I don’t know why she cared,” but much quieter, Harry finished the sentence, “for me. She moved me out of the servants quarters, and into the attached suite in her room. Gave me a bed. With blankets and pillows and a bloody night light. It didn't feel like she kept me close so that I was within arms reach if she needed something. It was like she kept me close so she could give me better than the servant's quarters would.”

Harry seemed to relax, tipping his head back against the wall, and closing his eyes. His fingers relaxed on his bruised ribs, but remained there protectively. “The longer I worked for her, the more… I think Grimshaw called it _attached_... she became to me. She talked to me because I never talked back. About anything, to anyone. Words were dangerous there, so we all kind of learned that the less we spoke, the less danger we would find ourselves in.”

“What did she talk to you about?” Louis asked gently.

Harry waved his free hand lazily. “Her day, usually,” he drawled. “Her emotions. Grimshaw. A five year courting is unusual for the royal family. Arranged marriages are sealed in a matter of weeks. She insinuated that the stalling was Grimshaw’s doing. I didn’t know him well, and everything has a story, you know? So she vented to me, but Grimshaw never talked to me much, so it was just...her words. She insinuated that she was ready to do her duty for the sake of her country, and he should be too, but the marriage had stalled. She felt lonely. Isolated. Nobody talked to her, so she talked to me, because I guess she noticed that nobody talked to me either.” Harry shook his head. “Stupid, to think she could find comfort in the company of a servant, like we were surviving the same situation together. I didn’t…” Harry swallowed for a moment, grimaced, and then gingerly cleared his throat. “I didn’t talk much, but I guess I listened. I guess she seemed like she needed it; to be heard. She told me to call her Pierre but I never could. I think it bothered her when I called her by her title, so I started calling her Miss, and she started calling me Haz. Soft like.”

Louis glanced up from his notepad, to catch the soft look on Harry’s face. It contrasted vividly with the bruising around his neck, the garish meaty fingerprints pressed into his skin. Harry coughed, and lifted his free arm halfway to cover his mouth before aborting the direction of the movement to pressed his fingers against his chest instead. He grimaced and then coughed and cleared his throat.

“One day,Grimshaw came to her room, and he was one of those royals that viewed servants like furniture. He just didn’t see us. We didn’t exist unless we fucked up, or he wanted to fuck us. So I guess he didn’t notice I was in her room. His uh - the queen - wanted them to spend more time together, in public, to make the courtship more noticeable. And Pierre was relaying it to him and he was in a mood. I don’t know if she just wasn’t good at reading the room, because of her position, or if that was just his disposition every time he spoke to her, but he was in a mood, and didn’t want to hear it. Didn’t like the idea of her telling him what to do, so he hit her.”

Harry was frowning now. Louis glanced down and noticed the fingers laying against the bruising on his ribs were slowly stroking over the bruises. “He went to hit her again and she wasn’t doing anything. She wasn’t moving away from it or defend herself, so I did. Put myself between him and her and told him not to… fucking touch her again. I’d been her personal servant for two years by then. She’d been so miserable in that castle. Isolated from her family. Like a china doll. Just to look at. And now this arsehole was hitting her. It was dumb. Pierre was royalty, but not… he outranked her. He didn’t know who the fuck I was, but suddenly he was staring at me, like he’d never seen me before and didn’t understand how I’d even gotten into the room. And then his face changed and he looked inhumanly angry. Just the embodiment of rage. He hit me. But he didn’t hit her again. I didn’t realize then that what I’d done was put a target on my back. I didn’t realize then that she already had one on hers. I fucking killed myself for somebody that was already dead. Didn’t know.”

Harry started picking at the worn threading at his knee. “You believe Grimshaw had his intended lady murdered,” Louis asked.

“I believe she refused to sleep with him before she wed him,” Harry said quietly, carefully. “I believe he always intended to kill her, because he didn’t want to marry her. I don’t know why. I don’t know if it was pride, or if he had a secret lover. But I believe he raped her that night, knowing that she was already dead. And he framed me to spite her, in the meantime, because I was the only person she cared about in that castle.”

Louis frowned. To exonerate Harry, they would have to put the rape on a man that was already dead. That Harry himself had killed. “There’s a history,” Harry rumbled quietly. His eyes were still closed, but it was like he could see the look of uncertainty on Louis’s face. “That night, after he left her room, he had me roused in the middle of the night and taken to the court yard and whipped, for disobedience. Twenty lashes. He woke the entire servants quarter so they could watch it. So they could remember their place.” Harry scratched irritably at his knee and quietly added, “Pierre moved me into her own room for two weeks, until I could walk again. She relieved me of my duties and had food personally brought to me. She let me sleep in her bed, and stroked my hair when I had bad dreams. Nobody had ever…” Harry cut himself off and swallowed hard, but Louis heard his unfinished thought. Nobody had ever shown him that kindness. 

“After that, I saw him more than I had in my entire life. It was almost like he’d started a game, with Pierre. He would hit me, so she would know. I never told her anything about it, but I was with her most of the time. She saw everything. She would send me out of her room if she knew he would be visiting. Which seemed to make him angrier. If I spoke in his presence, he took it as disobedience, and had me publicly whipped. She meant to protect me from what he viewed as just punishments. So he punished me for it. He stopped requesting an audience with her, and just showed up, knowing I would be there. He started hitting her more. To antagonize me, so that he could hurt me, so that he could spite her. He hated us both. I didn’t understand why until after everything had already happened. Until he accused me of raping her. I didn’t realize the relationship royalty could have with their servants. Because that wasn’t the relationship I had with her. We weren’t …. I loved her. But I wasn’t infatuated with her. She treated me like a son and I never treated her like a mother, but I never saw my own anymore. She was the closest thing I had to one. To cross that line, even mentally hadn't ever occurred to me.”

Harry’s picking at his knee grew steadily more restless, until Louis reached over and put his hand over Harry’s, stilling his fingers. “I was with her that night. The night of the … She sent me out of the room when he came over. He tried to stop her. He seemed more angry. I was…. I think fifteen. I was getting taller. He couldn’t crowd me against the wall as easily. He threatened to put me out in the fields, or the whorehouse. Or the army. Anywhere far enough away from his intended. Said he didn’t trust me. And the way I never talk unless it’s to disagree with him. I didn’t understand what he was implying. I was a fucking idiot,” Harry surmised darkly.

“We got into a … it’s probably in the records. I don’t know what is. They didn’t use any at my trial, they didn’t really need to. I don’t really remember what they … talked about. I don’t really remember much of it.” Louis remembered how his father had said that Harry could barely string two thoughts together at the trial, and he imagined that most of it was likely a blank spot in Harry’s memory.

“We got into a fight,” Harry continued. “Grimshaw wanted to consummate their intended marriage. Pierre didn’t want to, until they were actually married. Said it would be a crime against God himself. Grimshaw tried to force it, and I stopped him and he must’ve remembered that I was taller. I could pull him off of her. He tried to send me out of the room. I don’t know if he just planned on me being there for the rape, like he thought I would just sit there and watch or… I don’t know what he thought would happen, but I told him no. It was dumb. I shouldn’t of … he lost his fucking mind. He tried to hit me and I defended myself. Shoved him a bit. Committed an act of treason. But he was better than me. Part of the royal army and all that. He laid into me. Hit me pretty hard. A lot. I don’t remember it too clearly. I don’t know if it was over quick. But suddenly Grimshaw was gone and Pierre was laying in bed, crying. Just this heart broken, end of the world sobbing. And I went to her and took her in my arms, and she cried for a while. Just whispered over and over again,” Harry softened his voice to repeat her words, “ _I said no, Haz, I said no_ , just over and over again. And I gave her what she gave me the first time I got punished. I stroked her hair and let her cry against me until she was too tired to stay awake and then I let her sleep. Grimshaw dragged me out of her bed the next morning, accused me of defiling his intended. Told them I’d ruined her for him. And it… I was in bed with his intended, she was naked, she had dried blood caked to her… and tear stains on her cheeks, and bruises… said that was evidence enough.” Harry grimaced, because the evidence had looked bad. Grimshaw had predicted them, and they’d been predictable, and it had ruined them.

Louis became aware of Harry’s fingers twitching restlessly beneath the hand he had on Harry’s knee. He found himself shifting his thumb, stroking it over the scabbed over knuckles of Harry’s hand.

“I don’t remember the next year very well. He had me publicly whipped the next day. It got infected and that’s kind of where my memory…” Harry made a noise of annoyance. “I know the injuries. It took forever to heal the bones they broke. I couldn’t fight for an entire year after they sentenced me to this shit hole. They had to give me some kind of rudimentary physical therapy. I had trouble talking for a while, Still do. She died,” he said softly. “Alone. And now he’s dead and it feels like a fucking waste of time. None of it mattered. He killed her, killed _me_ and none of it fucking mattered. He wasted her life for nothing. She deserved better. She died thinking she killed me. I don't know if he killed her, but he put the blade in her hand and put it to her wrist, no matter if he actively cut her open or not, he did that to her, and she didn't deserve it. She didn't deserve to be alone.” Harry’s voice had gotten impossibly softer, until Louis had to strain to hear it. He could feel Harry’s fingers trembling beneath his hand, but other than that, Harry remained still.

Until Louis could hear the quiet catches of Harry’s breath. Harry ignored it at first, until the catches slowly evolved into very soft wheezes, like the air was rattling out of him. Louis moved his hand and Harry lifted that hand to press at his own chest, a look of utter annoyance crossing over his face. Harry seemed intent on ignoring it further, but it wasn’t going away. His breathing got choppier and choppier until Harry was forced to move. It was the first time Harry had moved from his spot since Louis had entered the room, and it became very obvious why. 

The boy could barely move on his own. He struggled to lift himself from the bed and rummage beneath the mattress for the red bit of plastic - his inhaler. He brought it to his mouth, impatiently dispensing the medicine to his lungs. Louis watched as Harry did this several times, until his breathing finally even out.

“Apparently, I’m fucking asthmatic.” When Harry spoke, he still sounded slightly breathless. Gingerly, he lowered himself back down to the bed. “I didn’t rape her. I loved her. If you want to stand a chance in hell of reversing a royal trial, figure out what he did to her when he wasn’t torturing me. She was alone with him for eight months.”


	3. Nothing

Harry had been right, mostly. Most of what he was involved in were in the public records available to Louis. Mostly. Every falling out Harry had had with a member of the royal family was right there in print. With Harry’s account of events in his mind, it was clear that the events of the records had been … twisted a fair bit. That wasn’t surprising. That was generally how public records covered any disagreement between a member of the royal family and someone beneath their station in life. The royal was never in the wrong. It was illegal to insinuate otherwise. Even the circumstances of the rape were in the record, plain as day. Louis read over it for a second time, copying down the details and source. Lady Pierre’s physical and emotional state was plain and clear. Naked, clearly evidence of a struggle. Red handprint across her face, bruising on her hips and thighs and chest. Half dressed teenage servant found in her bed. Clearly a thorough inspection had been done of him too, and Louis grimaced to think about how that must've felt, for Harry as a child. The record noted the severe bruising on his face and ribs and throat.

Louis blew out a frustrated breath and flipped forward a few pages, pausing only when he saw Harry’s name in print again. Criminal admitted to the infirmary. He paused. Harry had been vague about his time following the rape, which made sense. Harry claimed to not remember much of it, which seemed logical and seemed to line up with anybody who had witnessed the damage the boy had taken. Only now did it occur that that might also be part of a public record Harry didn’t have access to.

He scanned further down. Seven days following the rape of Lady Pierre, Harry was taken to the local infirmary, suffering from an aggressive infection. The boy was delirious, semi conscious, suffering several broken ribs, a broken collar bone, and… Louis paused, frowning. “Evidence of rectum tearing,” he repeated out loud. He had to physically force himself to take that down as note, swearing that it would only help them in the retrial, but his stomach was turning so forcefully he had to close the files and push himself away from his table. He needed a break. Harry had said that he didn’t remember much after the infection set it, and the record insinuated that Harry was so deep into infection that he was delirious. But the record also implied that even when Harry was healing badly from a public lashing, his guards, or Grimshaw, or _someone_ had continued to beat him. Had possibly raped him. Even though the boy couldn’t have been conscious all that much. This wasn’t an interrogation, or a punishment for defiling the lady. This was just straight forward, malicious torture. As if they hadn’t cared if Harry had been conscious for it.

Louis felt his heart breaking for this vulnerable, quiet, fifteen year old child. 

He needed a break. So he took the script he’d bribed out of Liam, a childhood friend interning under the local pharmacist, got a bottle of morphine filled, and found his way back to the arena. The same guard, impassive as the day before, led him through the labyrinth and into Harry’s room. Harry remained in the same level of undress as he had the day before. He remained in the same position as the day before too, but this time, he had a knee drawn up to his chest and a book balanced on it. Harry’s eyes were already looking at him by the time the door closed behind him. Which meant that Harry got to watch Louis’s expression change from the neutrality he had to will onto it before entering the room to something much less neutral. There were new bruises on Harry’s face. Spanning from his temple down over his cheekbone, his skin was a deep shade of pink. Louis’s eyebrows drew together and furrowed as he frowned. 

“What happened?” Louis asked at the same time that Harry asked, “what’s wrong.” Louis balked. “What’s wrong? What happened to your face?” He moved into the room, crossing over to Harry’s bed.

Harry frowned in confusion. “Nothing,” he said. And then seemed to amend it to whatever he thought might end the conversation faster. “Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing.” Which obviously, Harry didn’t know Louis, because that was the worst way to end a conversation because Louis would definitely worry about it. Several minutes passed in silence, just Harry watching the frown on Louis’s face. But then Louis’s fingers were on Harry’s chin, tilting his chin to see the bruising better, and for whatever reason, Harry wasn’t swatting that presumptuous hand away from him. “It happens,” he finally said quietly, softer. “There was a disagreement. Somebody disagreed with my face. And expressed that disagreement with their fist. It happens. I have a disagreeable face.”

Louis scoffed. “Bullshit,” he muttered. “I’ll speak to someone about this. You have a lawyer now. That means you have some rights you didn’t have before. Starting with someone that will bitch every time something like this happens.” A look crossed Harry’s face but he quickly schooled it back into something cooler, more reserved. “Your voice sounds better,” Louis said, finally releasing Harry’s chin.

“Yeah, it hurts less,” Harry allowed, marking his place in his book and setting it aside. “Expected you to be gone longer. I already told you everything I know.”

“While I highly doubt that’s actually true,” Louis started, but his tone wasn’t accusatory. It was almost teasing, and he wasn’t sure where the hell that had come from. To dismiss it, Louis pulled the bottle of pills from his jacket and presented them to Harry. “I promised you pain relief.”

A sharp look of surprise crossed Harry’s face, before he managed to contain it and reach for the bottle with a wince. “They gave you morphine.” He turned the bottle over in his hand. “For me?” His name was on the bottle. He knew how to spell his own name and that was clearly what the bottle said.

“Gave is a strong word,” Louis allowed. “It might be frowned upon. You’ll have to keep it out of sight, like your inhaler. But it’s legally prescribed to you. I just can’t ensure it won’t be confiscated.”

“I can’t pay you back for this, they don’t pay me,” Harry said immediately, holding the bottle as if it was a fragile gift that Louis had given him, that Louis could demand back at any second. “I don’t have insurance, obviously, I’d be the world’s biggest liability, so I don’t know how much -”

“I’m well aware of your finances, Harold,” Louis cut in, and there it was again - the slight teasing cadence to his voice. It brought Harry up short. “This is pro bono. All of it. I’ve decided to do it because it’s right, rather than an excuse to line my pockets.”

Harry was silent for a while, turning the full pill bottle over in his hand. Then finally, so quiet it was almost a whisper, he said, “I don’t understand. I’m nobody. Nothing.”

“I see you,” Louis said, pitching his own tone quieter, to match Harry’s. “You exist. You’re alive. Don’t you think it’s about time we stop letting _them_ tell you who you are. What you are?” Louis couldn’t explain where this all was coming from. Weeks ago, he didn’t even know this kid existed. Harry had truly been nobody to him. Harry was still nobody to most people in this city. To the people that knew his name, he was a rapist; a kid who had torn off the very hand that fed him. Treasonous. He hadn’t even made a personal connection. All he knew of the kid was the circumstances which had led him here. He knew nothing personal. And the kid knew even less about him. And yet somehow, Louis could feel himself … becoming attached. He could feel himself wanting this to work, and he didn’t understand where any of that had come from. But Harry sat before him as a victim of the system itself. A casualty of the economy this society insisted on harboring. Born into abject poverty, tossed away like trash after (presumably) being framed for a crime that he was too young to even contemplate ever committing. It felt wrong, in Louis's bones, in the very fiber of his being. And he had no doubt that even if he managed to pull a miracle, he would never be able to truly fix how truly wrong it had all gone for Harry. He couldn't ever give Harry back the pieces that their own king had broken, not really. But damn did he want to fucking try.

“I don’t even know who I am,” Harry said softly. 

“You’re Harry Styles,” Louis said after a beat, when Harry didn’t go on. “Your name might be the only thing you own right now, but by the end of this, it will matter, I promise you. You'll be the first person to sue the country and win. That'll matter in the end of this. So I'd appreciate it if you only take one of those as required by pain and not accidentally overdose yourself and ruin my big plans for you." If Louis wasn't pretending not to be watching Harry closely, he would have rather loudly enjoyed the very faint smirk that twitched along Harry's lips, but since he was pretending to be a normal professional type of person, he was forced to ignore that entirely.


	4. Chapter 4

The doctor, an Irish bloke by the name of Niall Horan, had petitioned for a two month break for Harry, so he wouldn’t have to perform - perform is the word they kept using - while severely injured. He bought Harry six weeks. Louis began visiting him four days a week. Nothing about it changed. Harry was always sitting on his bed, back pressed against the wall. The only alteration was the bracelet they welded shut around Harry’s wrist. It was neon orange, and Harry had to explain to Louis that it meant ‘handle with concern’. It was a literal sign welded around his wrist that told his guards that he was not meant to be treated with excessive force. The fact that they needed to put a sign on a prisoner boggled Louis’s mind, and upon his baffled reaction, Harry laughed at him. It was the first time Louis saw anything resembling a smile cross the kid’s face, and the mere expression lit up Harry’s face, as if he had the sun itself beneath his skin. But it was fleeting, as if Harry was startled at the reaction himself, and moved quickly to mute it. 

But it became a routine. Half the days, Louis didn’t get around to actively discussing Harry’s case with him. Some days, he lounged on Harry’s bed, working on other cases in silence, while Harry read quietly from his book. So Louis tried to give him a new book. He’d only ever seen Harry read that one book. He wasn’t sure if it was the only one Harry was allowed to have. Harry’s initial hesitation seemed to imply something else, though. “It’s in the same genre. So I thought you might like to read something else,” Louis said, by way of explanation, offering Harry the book. 

Tentatively Harry took the offered book, turning it over in his long fingered grasp. But the hesitation didn’t seem to leave his face, even after he accepted it. “But if it’s not the right genre, that’s okay, I can find a different one,” Louis added with forced casualness. 

“It’s not that,” Harry told him quickly. “I don’t - I’m not -” he frowned, glaring down at the book propped up on his knee. “I don’t read,” he said slowly. 

Louis frowned. “I don’t understand,” he said. 

“I’m not reading,” Harry tried again, somehow slower.

Louis glanced toward his book pointedly, as if to argue that point.

“You’re supposed to be the lawyer,” Harry said, suddenly defensive, still frowning at him. 

“I don’t understand what that has to do with anything,” Louis said dumbly.

“I told you we didn’t receive any school, you’re supposed to remember that,” Harry said stubbornly. “I told you the only thing Pierre used me for was to talk to me, and prepare her baths for her and braid her hair.”

“But you’ve been reading every day for -”

“I’m not reading,” Harry repeated, growing increasingly frustrated with Louis’s inability to understand.

“Then what -” Louis frowned, cutting himself off. Harry’s tone was growing harsher the more frustrated he became, so Louis had to force himself to become calmer, instead of matching his tone. He didn’t even understand what was happening here. “Then what have you been doing,” he said calmly.

Harry frowned, glaring down at the book. “I memorized it,” he said quietly. 

“You memorized it,” Louis repeated slowly. “I don’t under -”

“Pierre liked to read,” Harry cut it. “This book. Every night. Eventually, I memorized it, so I could read to her instead of her having to read to me, like a good servant.”

“You memorized a whole book,” Louis repeated stupidly.

“That’s what I fucking said,” Harry huffed impatiently.

“But you never learned to read,” Louis said.

“You pretending to be some kinda parrot now?" Harry asked, with rapidly increasing impatience.

“But you’re clearly capable of it - you memorized a whole book,” Louis pointed out, deciding not to take his bait. If Harry had been born into a different station in life - he could have gone somewhere. He seemed smart in the arena, but the ability to memorize an entire book, word for word, without being able to actively read the words … that suggested intelligence. Harry scoffed, but Louis didn’t give him time to dismiss it. “I’ll teach you,” he said decisively.

Harry balked. “You - you can’t just offer things -” he started, and then frowned at Louis. “What would be the point?” he asked quietly, staring down at his lap. Louis could see the anger visibly drain out of Harry, deflating into an insecure, withdrawn child.

“The point?” Louis couldn’t imagine a world where reading the written word didn’t exist. “If I hadn’t told you I was giving you morphine, you wouldn’t know what you were taking. You’d be forced to either trust me, or suffer through pain. Reading enables you to rely on only yourself. And if you want to do something after you’re pardoned, you’ll need to read. Or be forced to return to being a servant.”

Harry fiddled with a fox eared page of the book open in his lap. Louis found himself reaching out to Harry, touching his chin, tilting the boy’s head up. Reluctantly, Harry met Louis’s imploring eyes. “Learning is never a waste. I could die tomorrow, and I would never regret any second I spent learning. You shouldn’t either. If nothing changes, if I fail - you’ll still be able to read while you’re in here. New books. As often as you want. Okay? It won’t be a waste, regardless of how this turns out.”

Reluctantly, Harry nodded, absorbing Louis’s words. “Okay,” he said, quietly. “Yeah, okay, fine,” he amended. 

Louis beamed at Harry and reached out to ruffle his moppy head of curls, faltering only when Harry tensed and Louis was forced to fully realize what he was doing. But Harry didn’t smack his hand away. Instead he ducked his head and focused intently on his book.

Louis wasn’t a teacher. But he found himself shirking other, less important responsibilities, to spend hours in Harry’s cell, teaching him how to identify small words. It was tedious, but it became very apparent, very fast, that Harry’s memory was good. He remembered that his father had implied that it was surprising the kid walked away without significant brain damage, but interacting with this kid - Louis couldn’t understand how Harry’s cognitive functions had remained so well intact. He almost seemed to have total cognitive recall. Louis rarely had to repeat lessons. Harry quickly memorized what sounds every letter had to make, and what they looked like in a sentence. He seemed reluctant to painfully sound out every new word, voicing more than once that it made him sound stupid.

Louis started looking less like a lawyer, and more like a personal cheerleader. Harry couldn’t see how well he was doing, or how quickly he was catching on, or how ridiculous Louis looked every time he gushed about Harry’s progress. Harry never called him out on it, though. Usually, he ducked his head and focused harder on whatever he was attempting to read. Little by little, Louis was beginning to coax Harry into relaxing around him. Little by little, Louis began to coax startled half laughs out of Harry. And slowly, they began to become frequent enough that Harry didn’t immediately try to silence them. 

But then the grace period had ended. Six weeks to the date, Harry’s cell door swung open. Harry was sitting on his bed, a book open in his lap, slowly meandering his way through a slightly more advanced novel, sounding out each word that made him stumble in his low drawl. Louis felt Harry tense as soon as the door clicked open, before he could even see who it was. It made sense. Harry didn’t receive visitors. 

Two guards entered the small cell, one at a time. Louis lifted his gaze to watch their faces, but he noticed that Harry didn’t. He kept his gaze trained down, on the book, even while he was no longer actively trying to read it. “On your feet,” the first guard barked, voice hard. Obediently, Harry set his book aside, and rose to his feet, hand braced against his ribs. “Hands up,” the second guard barked. Harry made a faced, but lifted his hands, reluctant to pull his left hand free from ribs.

“I said up,” the man barked, and Louis sat up stiffly. 

“I ca-” Harry started, lifting his gaze from the floor. 

The guard was quick to push him back against the wall, baton pressed hard against his ribs. The baton didn’t drop when Harry’s back was pressed against the wall; instead the guard used it to pin him there. “Oi, mate!” Louis was quick to shout, suddenly on his feet. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

Beyond the guards, as the second one turned toward Louis, Louis caught Harry’s eyes on him. They were widened slightly, surprised, but then Harry shook his head just slightly, as if to tell Louis to hold off. Then the second guard stepped in close to Louis, blocking Harry entirely from sight. And that was when the baton left Harry’s ribs and hit him across the jaw, dropping him to his knees with an audible grunt. The first guard followed Harry down, pressing close enough to him to speak into his ear. It all happened very fast. It seemed as if the guards were working on the belief that if nobody saw anything, it didn’t happen. Louis tried to shove past the second guard, briefly catching a glimpse of Harry on his knees, his head pulled back by a hand in his hair. He saw the grimace on Harry’s face, the strong, tense line of his jaw, before the second guard shoved him back so hard, the back of his knees hit the bed and he fell back onto it.

And then it was over. The first guard left first, and the second guard followed suit, without further acknowledging Louis. The door clanged shut behind them. Harry stayed on his knees, his head bowed. He seemed to be breathing hard, his hand back on his ribs. Louis was quick to move to Harry’s side, kneeling down beside him. “Are you -” Louis stopped, suddenly uncertain of what he should say here, or if he should touch Harry. Asking if he was okay seemed stupid and childish.

“He uh - they um -” Harry’s voice sounded lower than it had before, rougher. “Scheduled a fight for tonight - that’s what they came to say,” he mumbled, but he was still hunched over.

Uncertainly, Louis pressed a hand to his back. “They want you to fight,” Louis said quietly.

“They scheduled me to fight,” Harry corrected him. 

“The fight’s two week’s early,” Louis pointed out. “The next one isn’t supposed to be until next month.”

“This is a charity,” Harry said quietly. He swallowed hard and shoved his hand messily through his hair, pushing it off of his face, but he didn’t make any other move to get up off of his knees. “The king wants to host a - a duel. For charity. All the ticket sales. He wanted me. Nonlethal.”

Louis watched Harry closely. Harry was pale, and looked very much like he’d rather die before he fought against the king himself in a nonlethal match. “That’s what they came in to tell me. To remind me. That it’s nonlethal.”

“They came in to threaten you,” Louis said dully, and Harry dipped his head in a shaky nod. “What did they say?” He asked. He’d been too far away to hear anything, but he’d seen that man press his lips against Harry’s ear. 

Harry shook his head. “Told me that’s what this bracelet means. Told me I could have a nonlethal match every fucking month if they felt like it.” Louis scowled. That seemed decisively unfair. “The world’s unfair,” Harry told him quietly, as if he could read exactly where Louis’s thought process was going. 

Louis huffed out a breath of annoyance. “Well that’s fucking annoying,” he muttered, earning a faint wry grin from Harry. Finally Harry shoved himself back, off of his knees. Rather than rising from the ground, he sat back on his arse. 

“How do charity fights usually work?” Louis asked curiously, sitting down beside him. 

Harry shrugged. “No weapons are allowed,” he said. “No fatal unarmed moves. No neck breaking - though bone breaking is allowed, but generally frowned upon if done to a person that actually matters, like the king - no eye gouging, nothing below the belt. No biting. It only ends when the other person can’t get up. And if that person is a member of the royal family … I could be executed. It’s usually just a reason for them to beat on a prisoner until they get tired. It’s … I’m being punished,” Harry surmised quietly. “For this.” He lifted his hand and the bracelet glinted in the dull light of the cell. “They’ll schedule another fight in two weeks, a lethal one.”

Louis felt himself make a noise, more so than he heard it. He couldn’t really hear much of anything over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. Something told him that Harry wasn’t being punished for his bracelet. He was being punished for all of it. Daring to have the audacity to demand a retrial. To have a lawyer. To kill the Prince in fair combat. To exist in general. They were trying to kill him before anything serious could happen. And Louis had never felt more useless, because there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. The only person who could save Harry from this was himself.

They sat in silence for a while, until Louis reached over and took Harry’s hand in his, and Harry let him. Eventually Harry leaned his head on Louis’s shoulder and they sat in silence for a little longer. Louis opened his mouth to finally break it, after what felt like hours, glancing down at Harry’s resting head, but the sight alone made him close his mouth without saying anything. Harry’s eyes were shut and his breathing had evened out, and he was very clearly asleep. He looked a lot younger like that. A lot more vulnerable. So Louis sat there, in this suffocating, heavy silence, because he couldn’t bring himself to wake him up. Not when sleep would be the only peace this boy would know.


	5. Good Boy

Louis stayed with Harry until he was asked to leave the cell in preparation for the fight. Harry had an hour. Louis didn’t go back home. Instead, he wandered back out to the greater arena, and found a seat. Most of the hour for him was consumed with his glaring a hole into the stage from his distance, and shaking his leg anxiously. He couldn’t imagine what that hour felt like for Harry. These prisoners weren’t exactly given room for exercise or training. Whatever they learned to do, they learned in the arena, and had to figure out their own way to practice and hone those skills. He’d spent the better part of six weeks seeing Harry frequently, and for long enough duration, that he could ascertain that Harry rarely trained. 

Or maybe Harry waited until after he was gone to train. Maybe Louis should ask him about it tomorrow. Louis anxiously scratched at his knee, and then tried bouncing his other leg for a while. Maybe he should’ve brought a clock with him. Maybe that would make this hour go faster. According to Harry, how this usually worked was, the royal member came out, and gave a speech to the crowd before the fight. Something about charity, or honor, or blah blah blah (as Harry eloquently had put in his slow drawl, with a vague dismissive wave of his long fingered hand). Then the fighter was brought out. It was usually the most popular fighter at the time - just to influence more ticket sales. Harry scoffed at the idea of himself being considered the “most” popular fighter at this current time, and Louis had to admit that he didn’t watch these matches often enough to gauge any other fighter, or what kind of popularity or appeal they might have. 

So, shouldn’t King Julius be coming out right about now, to deliver that blah blah blah speech or something? The growing crowd was audibly becoming restless around him, idly chattering among themselves. It felt very much like being in the middle of a eating hall, the cacophony of noise almost overwhelming. Louis tuned them out for the most part, his eyes narrowed on the empty stage. 

And then finally, the lights around the stage lit up. Louis straightened up impatiently. King Julius strode out, dressed to the nines in his long, red velvet flowing gown. He didn’t look dressed for a match, and while Harry had failed to mention any ridiculous costume changes, perhaps it worked differently for a king. A king had never done this before. A king was indispensable, and above this. The arena was entertainment for commoners, filled with gladiators, the large majority of which were criminals. Commoner criminals. To subject a royalty to this kind of arena was either extreme punishment, as it had been for Prince Grimshaw, or extreme charity - a gift to the king's subjects. But even in those regards, such as charity fights, the king himself had always been too important to subject himself to rubbing elbows with those beneath him. This was historic. And it set Louis on edge, because what Harry was already trying to do was historic, and it was too much. Too dangerous. They could execute Harry here and now, live, in front of thousands, by tying his hands behind his back and forcing him to subject himself to this mockery of a fight that he wasn't even allow to defend himself during. They could force him to participate in his own execution right now. It would be humiliating, and terrifying, and be a lesson for the thousands of subjects to the king in this very arena, and to the millions outside of it. And that terrified Louis, because that would be the smart, easy thing to do. To just end this, here and now. 

“Thank you,” King Julius began, his voice commanding and far reaching. Quickly, a silence fell over the crowd like a blanket. “For gathering here tonight in honor of a truly great charity. I won’t bore you with the details, I’m sure that is not the kind of entertainment you’ve all gathered to witness, but a society is only as great as their social resources, and I cannot speak good enough things about the OCP.” Louis frowned, because the King chose to pause there, rather than …. Speak those good things. He didn’t even explain what OCP was. What kind of speech was this? OCP was an outreach. One hundred percent of their profits went to the medical care designated for soldiers returning from war. They had been at peace for the last four hundred years. If Louis wasn't so terrified right now, he would have laughed at how insanely misplaced orchestrating an entire fight for a service they didn't even currently need was. How out of touch. 

Louis took a deep even breath in, held it, and then exhaled slowly. He needed to calm down. These were treasonous thoughts. “Luckily, your fighter tonight - this kid - really does seem to be on a winning streak lately, huh? He’s offered to support this charity by participating in monthly charity fights for the foreseeable future. I can’t promise that every combatant will be a member of the royal family, we do have nonviolent responsibilities after all, but I can promise you that our faithful citizens, such as yourselves, will be entertained regardless.”

Louis felt himself tense all over. What the hell did that mean? Monthly charity fights for the foreseeable future? Harry had seemed to prefer to rather die than even commit to this one fight; Louis found it very hard to believe that he would willingly commit to more. One every month. 

The speech seemed to be over, as the King took his step back and then moved toward the gate. When Louis squinted, he could see the silhouette of the king pause just inside of the gate. He could see somebody else there in front of the king. They appeared to be speaking, before King Julius continued further into the area beyond the gate, disappearing entirely from view, while the person he’d been talking to was roughly shoved past the gate, onto stage. It was Harry. 

And Harry looked pissed. He’d been given different clothes. Fresh black athletic shorts that cleared his knees. He wasn’t given shoes or a shirt. His hair looked washed, curling softly around his ears and falling into his eyes until his long fingers impatiently shoved it back. The bruising along his ribs looked a lot fainter, as did the bruising on his throat. But they weren’t entirely gone. Even from where he was sat, Louis could see the dark, angry finger marks on each side of Harry’s neck.

Harry stood in the middle of the stage, glaring into the crowd the entire time the king was gone from the stage. When the man returned, he wore a new outfit, one much more fit for a boxing ring. It made him look slightly unfamiliar, if Louis were honest; to see the king of the nation dressed so down. The man walked toward Harry unhurriedly, but Harry seemed to need that entire time to brace himself to turn toward the man. 

King Julius came to a stop, and Harry didn’t move. Harry kept his gaze trained down, glaring at King Julius’s chest, rather than meeting his eyes. Louis knew why. It was the same reason Harry didn’t look any of his guards in the eye. It was his training. To look someone in a station above yours in the eye was to disrespect them. “Let’s begin,” the king proposed, his voice carrying.

Harry inclined his head jerkily in a nod, but didn’t move. King Julius sighed, and moved first. It became apparent very fast that every bit of experience the king had gained in his 52 years was not lost on him. He was fast, and his strikes were strong and straight. His formal education in the art of combat was as obvious as Harry’s lack of education. Harry remained as fast as ever, but the longer they fought, the more sloppy he got. He dodged as many hits as he could, but the rate of that was beginning to suffer. The king didn’t make the same mistake Harry’s last opponent had. The King didn’t give him an ounce of room to fully escape him. Harry couldn’t manage to put enough space in between them from the very beginning. 

Harry also couldn’t manage to talk himself into actually attempting to hit the king back, which left him at a severe disadvantage. It forced Harry to ignore blatant weaknesses, blatant openings. Because Harry never once forgot that who he was fighting right now was a king, in nonlethal combat, and anything he did here would have a very real consequence when this fight ended. Harry seemed to already accept this as a loss. 

Harry crashed back against the chain link fencing caging the stage in, pinned painfully against the metal by King Julius’s heavy body. He was breathing hard, his gasps tearing out of his mouth harshly as he tried desperately to twist away from the pinning without actually lifting a hand against the man doing the pinning. 

It was maddening - watching this farce of a fight. “You’re holding back boy,” King Julius murmured to Harry, but his voice carried. “I watched you gouge out a man’s eyes last month, and for me, you’re weak as an infant. Don’t be disappointing.”

Harry grimaced. “Eye gouging is prohibited, your highness,” Harry said tightly. 

King Julius pulled back his hand and hit Harry across the face. Cornered, Harry couldn’t deflect the strike. “Don’t be disappointing,” he repeated, harsher, more impatient. It seemed almost cruel - to demand Harry entertain the king, while knowing damn well to do so could get the boy killed. The king didn’t wait for Harry’s response. He pulled back his hand and hit Harry across the face, this time with a closed fist. Harry barely had time to grunt, before the king hit him a third time.

And then finally, Harry put actual effort into escaping the hold the King had on him. The problem, of course, was that beyond pushing and thrashing, Harry was still holding back, and the king was getting increasingly frustrated. He seemed to want a real fight. Finally King Julius wrapped his fingers around Harry’s throat, and lifted him from the ground and slammed him back against the iron fencing. 

Harry panicked, clawing at the King’s hands. Choking - choking was against the nonlethal combat rules, Louis recalled anxiously. But it didn’t matter. The match wouldn’t be called - not when the King was the person breaking the rules. For a few minutes, a dangerous hush fell over the stadium, until all Louis could hear was the beating of his own heart and the sound of wet choking coming from the stage. 

“Fight back!” It took Louis a second to realize that that shout had come from him, that he was the only person on their feet in this stadium. That his voice carried just as clearly as the combatants’ voices did. Louis faltered, as his voice echoed in the silence, but then rapidly the chant seemed to pick up. Several different voices echoed his sentiment, until it was all he could hear. Thousands of voices shouting the words clearly as if it had been said by only one person. _Fight back_.

So Harry did. He tried to tear the king’s hands away from his throat, but it didn’t work, and he couldn’t breath, so he started hitting at the king, until a stray, careless elbow caught the king in the throat, and the man reeled back, releasing Harry. Harry fell straight to his knees, choking on air he greedily forced back into his lungs. The crowd erupted into raucous cheers. When Louis managed to tear his eyes away from Harry, who was struggling back to his feet, he saw that the king had already recovered and was merely watching Harry, smiling. And then the king glanced behind him, his eyes finding Louis in the crowd, pinning him to the spot.

Louis tore his eyes away from the king, to return them to Harry, who was looking at him too. Harry had never looked more vulnerable than he did right now. And then he launched for the king, just as he had for the man he fought the month before. 

But King Julius seemed to sense it coming, turning back toward Harry at the last second. They went to the ground of the stage together, but the king clearly controlled the fall. He easily ended up on top of Harry. His lips moved, before he hit Harry, but the crowd was too loud and Louis couldn’t hear what he said. He was still smiling. Whatever it was didn’t seem to throw Harry off too much that he didn’t try to block the next hit. It drew blood, and the crowd was the same as sharks. The drawing of blood only seemed to make them wilder, louder. 

Harry bucked violently beneath the king, punching up wildly. King Julius swatted his fists away lazily, clearly playing with the boy. But when Harry sank his nails sharply down into the soft flesh of King Julius’s hips, the king backhanded him harshly across the face, and then pinned his wrists down against the ground. The crowd quieted enough that the wet noises of Harry panting through the blood gathering in his mouth carried across the quiet chatter of the arena. 

The king leaned close to him to murmur something into his ear. Harry stilled sharply, and the crowd grew restless from the pause in violence. Slowly, and then all at once, they started jeering, yelling out crude demands. _Kill him_. _Fuck him_. Louis startled, turning wildly in an attempt to glare at every single member of the audience collectively. 

Harry shifted minutely, turning his head slightly to spit out a mouthful of blood onto the ground. The king was still talking. He was talking too much. Louis could feel himself growing restless. King Julius released one of Harry’s wrists to grab his chin and force his head back until Harry was forced to meet his eye. Harry stilled, grimacing. He seemed more uncomfortable by that, than he was with being pinned beneath the man. Harry tried to shake his head in response to whatever the king was murmuring to him, but King Julius’s grip tightened on his jaw, stilling Harry’s movement. 

“No,” Harry ground out instead, his own voice carrying. 

The king smiled down at him, his hand slipping from Harry’s jaw to lazily return to his neck. That prompted Harry to renew his struggling, clearly reluctant to be choked again. While his words hadn’t carried, the king’s amused laughter did. “Don’t be disappointing,” he murmured. 

Harry caught up King Julius’s hand, tearing it away from his throat, and bending it back until a distinct crack carried through the arena. Several people gasped, and Louis breathed out, “fuck,” quietly. Harry canted his hip, bucking the man off of him, and rolled clumsily back to his feet, stumbling back several paces. 

Harry got a great deal more aggressive after that. He matched King Julius for every step, every blow. While the drastic difference in the level of their experience with combat remained prevalent - the king blocked most of Harry’s blows, while Harry seemed to avoid a chunk of the King’s blows by pure luck - the king seemed to be enjoying himself. He seemed delighted every time Harry used the injury to his hand against him, taking advantage of the obvious weakness. It didn’t seem to actually help Harry much - the king seemed just fine with the injury. He seemed to be playing with Harry, as if Harry were prey.

The fight seemed to last hours, and Harry never once gained the upper hand in it, but toward the end, he seemed to actively be trying to gain that. By the end of it, he wasn’t holding anything back. Every strike he made was meant to land, regardless of whether it actually did or not. 

And of course he lost - but he didn’t lose for any of the obvious reasons that combatants lost charity fights - he didn’t lose because he threw it. He lost because he had no training. He lost simply because the king was better than him. Eventually, the king seemed to tire of his game with Harry, and Harry seemed almost grateful for it. Right up until the ending of that, which cycled back around to how this had all began - with Harry pinned hard against the iron fencing, the king’s hand wrapped around his throat.

Harry was a great deal bloodier than he had been the first time around. He was a great deal sweatier too, his wild curls plastered to his forehead, stuck by both sweat and blood. His chest glistened with a sheen of sweat, as he panted wildly. The king steadily tightened his hand until the panting itself was halted, simply because Harry couldn’t draw in a breath. Harry didn’t concede, of course. He attempted to pry the hands from around his throat, but he was exhausted. Louis had never seen the boy exhausted in a fight. He’d never seen the end to the boy’s endurance - he’d thought it was bottomless, but of course that had been naive, foolish. Harry squeezed his eyes shut, his face growing redder the longer he was forced to go without air.

And then the king leaned into Harry, pushing him harder back against the fencing and whispered into his ear. “Good boy.” As if Harry were a dog. Then he released Harry, and let the boy fall to the ground. Harry sucked in air so violently, that his coughing was loud enough to cut through the raucous cheering. Harry couldn’t get back up. He couldn’t seem to stop the coughing. It sounded painful. It made Louis’s chest hurt. It really did look like Harry was just struggling to control his breathing, like he wasn't in the middle of what looked like a severe, painful asthma attack. The King walked away from the boy, who didn’t try to get up from his knees, clearly having lost interest in him.

The king moved to the center of the stage, dramatically bowed, and then strolled through the gate, as if the exhaustion or pain of the fight hadn’t ever even touched him. It was honestly impressive. It would have been at least, if Louis could look away from Harry, who remained on his hands and knees, choking on air so violently, he was almost hyperventilating. He was bowed so far over, his forehead nearly touched the ground.

Finally, two men entered the arena, and roughly dragged Harry back to his feet to lead him out, but Harry was still breathing dangerously hard, and didn’t seem too focused on what was happening.

Louis rose to his feet and shoved through the crowd, hurrying down to the infirmary so quickly, he nearly beat Harry there. Harry was still using his inhaler when Louis burst through the door. He wasn’t sure where the king had been led - but he definitely hadn’t been led to the same infirmary that the prisoners used. “What the hell was that,” Louis exploded. “Choking isn’t allowed in nonlethal combat.”

Niall shrugged, as he waited patiently for Harry’s breathing to return to some semblance of normal. He still sounded too harsh, even after Harry finally pulled the inhaler away. “He’s the king,” Niall pointed out, stepping in front of Harry to touch his throat. The kid look like he’d been mauled. The entirety of his throat was already darkening into an ugly, violent shade of purple. Louis couldn’t even make out any finger shaped bruises. The entire throat was just bruises. “No one died. That’s kinda the whole point of nonlethal combat, innit?”

It wasn’t his only injury. His temple was sluggishly bleeding, from a particularly hard hit to the floor, his curls plastered over the laceration, caked there with the blood. The entire right side of his face was slowly bruising. It seemed to be the side the king had preferred to hit. 

“He toyed with Harry the entire time - like he enjoyed it, like a fucking psycho,” Louis seethed, pacing behind Niall.

“Well… yeah, mate. Did you expect a peaceful show at the opera house? What the bloody hell did you think was gonna happen out there?” Niall drawled dismissively. He ran his fingers over Harry’s swollen jaw, to make sure nothing was broken, ignoring the sharp grimace that crossed Harry’s face. 

“And that bullshit about you signing up for every monthly charity fight - where the hell did that come from?” Louis continued, blatantly ignoring Niall.

“Talking to a fucking wall over here, ain’t I,” Niall muttered, peeling Harry’s hair away from the cut along his temple. 

“Told me before the fight,” Harry croaked. His voice was so shot, it was almost nonexistent. “Told me I had the face for it,” he exhaled. 

Louis grimaced. “You got the face for bloody romance novels, not for a fucking gladiator arena, is he off his rocker -” he started shortly. 

“Think that’s what he was implying,” Harry cut in, his voice deep and slow. “Women tend to watch charity fights more than death matches. Told me I’d draw more pussy than a toilet seat, in his words.”

Louis snorted derisively. “Earlier, when he had you on the ground, he said something to you and you said no - what - er, what did he say?” Louis asked, frowning at Harry.

“Told me to break his hand,” Harry rasped. “He told me if I didn’t stop being disappointing, he’d end the match and punish me for disobedience. Most of his talking was telling me what he’d do to me if I didn’t stop disappointing him. Can I have water?”

Louis was still frowning when he wandered toward the pitcher of water and poured Harry a glass. He brought it to Harry, but when Harry reached for it, his hand was shaking so badly, he couldn’t take the glass without spilling it.

“Adrenaline,” Niall supplied for Louis. 

Louis frowned and lifted the glass to Harry’s lips for him. Harry drank from it gratefully, but it still brought a grimace to his face. “Alright,” Niall said decisively. “You’re probably gonna lose your voice. Not like permanently, or anything, mate, don’t look at me like that. The King gave you a proper beating. Properly fucked your neck worse than that fatarse bloke last month. Try not to talk much. Let it swell and get over it, aye? It should pass in a week or so. Concussion might take longer. You didn’t appear to redamage any of your ribs, so that’s good, at least. Can’t really determine what the fuck is going on with your back, but I’m pretty sure it’s mostly just bruising, it's scratched all to hell from the fence. Seemed to of agitated a bit of your old lashing scars. Your jaw's not broken. Yada yada yada. Sounds like you got let off lucky a bit, if you ask me. Didn’t break anything. That right there is luck. Fuck off, stop staring at me like that,” Niall added dismissively to Louis. “I’m done, you can go back to fawning over your pet rapist,” he muttered, already wandering away from the two. 

Louis looked very much like he’d rather follow Niall and bash his head in. “He’s harmless,” Harry rasped, grimacing. Louis startled when he felt Harry’s fingers touch his wrist, his gaze snapping back to Harry. “It’s okay,” Harry said quietly. 

It sounded too much like Harry was trying to comfort Louis - like Louis had been wronged in some way, or was taking this too hard. It felt wrong. Louis turned his hand over, stroking his fingers over Harry’s wrist. They were red, but it didn’t look like it would bruise. “Thank you,” Harry said quietly, when Louis didn’t say anything or do anything beyond slowly stroking his fingers over Harry’s wrist.

Louis frowned. “For what?” He asked, his own tone soft.

“Telling me to fight, I guess,” Harry mumbled. “Got stuck in my head. Couldn’t break through it. Till I heard you, I guess. Helped cement me. Didn't expect you to stay for the … you know. Fight. I know you hate them.”

Louis made a face. “I never said I hate -”

“You say you hate them every time you talk about them,” Harry interrupted. He seemed patient, but the sharp contrast of his harsh voice made it hard to hear the patience in Harry’s words. “Just not in those words. You think they’re barbaric.”

“They are,” Louis huffed. “He called you good boy after he beat you into the ground, like you’re a pet monkey performing circus acts. By the end of this, we’re going to make him eat those words,” Louis vowed quietly. 

Harry watched Louis closely for a moment. Then slowly, he turned Louis’s hand over in his again, and curled his fingers closed around it, and just held it. As if that cemented him too. And Louis let Harry hold his hand for a good while.


	6. Human Contact

The charity fight served its purpose. Horan had told Harry to sleep off his concussion, but it quickly became apparent that Harry had suffered a severe concussion, and was stuck dealing with drowsiness and the inability to actually sleep. Getting Harry to focus long enough to discuss his case was akin to throwing jello at a wall and hoping for it to stick, so after the first two days, Louis stopped trying. He still visited Harry every day, though. He wasn’t sure when his visits went from three times a week to every single day after work, but it didn’t feel wrong, even when he stopped insisting on discussing Harry’s case. They likely didn’t need to meet to discuss it, if Louis were being honest. Harry had done his part, and now it was up to Louis to gather together the rest of the case. 

Harry spent most of the first few days laying in bed, with his head buried in the fold of his arms. Never before now had the room seemed so bright, but the constant lighting was starting to eat away at Harry. On the third day, Louis frowned, reaching out to drag his fingers through Harry’s wild curls. 

“Hm?” Harry hummed in question, without lifting his head. 

“It’s near nine,” Louis noted. Harry didn’t seem to mind the familiar touch, so Louis dragged his fingers through Harry’s hair again. His hair was softer than Louis had imagined. It felt like silk. “When’s lights out?”

“Seven,” Harry grunted.

“Then why -” Louis started, his fingers pausing in Harry’s hair.

“They stopped,” Harry murmured, voice muffled in the crook of his arm. “Doing it. The night I got back from the fight. They stopped doing lights out.”

“They stopped turning off the lights,” Louis echoed. “But then how are you supposed to…”

“‘Pose I’m not,” Harry mumbled. 

“But your concussion -” Louis started again, and there was an edge to his voice. He could hear it. Harry was beginning to catch on that that edge always preceded some misguided rant about injustice.

“I know, Louis,” Harry murmured, in his slow, deep drawl. Harry hadn’t been talkative lately, choosing to remain silent rather than endure his voice cracking every other word. But his voice seemed to be evening back out today. “Pretty sure they do too. They can touch me. Always could. Just had to get creative bout it. Don’t worry bout it. It’s easier this way.”

“You’re hardly sleeping,” Louis pointed out quietly. 

“Was hardly sleeping before,” Harry told him just as quietly. “It doesn’t matter.” He shifted, turning his face toward Louis. He grimaced, closing his eyes against the bright light. “Seriously, it doesn’t, Louis. They’re doing it to fuck with you, not me. They think you’re the weak link, and all they gotta do is get under your skin to throw you off. Don’t let it work, and we’ll be fine.”

Louis frowned, brushing Harry’s hair away from his face. He watched the way Harry’s face seemed to relax beneath the touch. His eyes remained shut, but the tension seemed to ease out of his body. “Okay,” Louis agreed. Then he lowered his other hand, pressing it down over Harry’s eyes, and Harry exhaled audibly in appreciation. “I can stay until you fall asleep if you want,” Louis said, letting his other hand return to stroking through Harry’s hair.

“You’re coddling me,” Harry murmured, lifting a hand to cover the one Louis had over his eyes, but Harry didn’t try to pull that hand away. He left his own hand over it, adding pressure to it, but also decisively keeping it there. “We didn’t even get any work done today.”

“Sure we did,” Louis decided. “Human contact. That’s the foundation for sociology. The one common thread that keeps us sane. I’m keeping you sane, Styles, yeah? Not a single second I spend with you is wasted. Because you’re staying sane.”

A faint smile touched Harry’s lips, and Louis could feel the shift of Harry’s face ripple through their hands. But it was fleeting. “'M serious, Louis. You need to … detach yourself better. You went on a treasonous rant in front of Horan. He’s harmless and doesn’t give much of a shite, probably even agrees with you, but that could’ve been anybody, and they could’ve got you executed for it. I’m not -” Louis could see the word that got lodged in Harry’s throat, the rest of that sentence. Harry wanted to tell him that he wasn’t worth it. Louis opened his mouth to argue that unspoken sentiment, but Harry quickly continued.

“I’m not a weapon unless you let them make me one. Against you, I mean. I’m not a weapon against you. Unless you let them make me one,” Harry continued quietly. “You’re using the law against them, and they’ll use me against you. Because you give a shite enough to use the law. The charity fights, the spite with the bullshit lights - don’t let it get to you. None of it matters. What matters is me getting pardoned, right? Focus on that and nothing else, because everything else is temporary, that’s what you said.”

Louis swallowed hard. Harry was better at this than he was. He wasn’t in a box that forced him to censor himself, and Harry was right. He shouldn’t have complained about the King like that quite so loud, or in front of anybody else. He’d just … been so concerned about Harry. And he supposed Harry was right about that too. He was meant to be concerned, that had been the whole goddamn point, hadn’t it? They hurt Harry to hurt him. To hurt them both, likely. But if Louis got himself executed, then Harry was fucked either way. 

“Okay,” Louis said quietly. “I’ll be more careful, you’re right. I lost my temper.”

“Just don’t … be a worse enemy to yourself than they are, I guess, okay?” Harry murmured.

“I won’t be,” Louis promised him. “Just don’t …. Lose your hope, okay? Don’t let them convince you that this isn’t worth it. It’ll be worth it. Always.”

“Always,” Harry agreed. “Don’t stop,” he added, softer, like the idea of asking for something made him uncomfortable. “With my hair. Until after I fall asleep. If that’s okay, I mean. I mean I like it. If you want to keep…”

“Okay,” Louis assured him, smiling faintly. “I won’t stop.”

Harry nodded slightly, and then sighed and allowed himself a small, brief smile.

It didn’t take Harry long to fall asleep, but Louis continued stroking his hair and shielding his eyes longer than that. He continued stroking Harry’s hair until the door opened and he was kicked out, because visiting hours had expired hours ago, and he was already supposed to be gone. Louis did his best to ease himself up off of the bed and out from beneath Harry’s head as gently and quietly as he could manage and let himself be escorted out.

He returned to Harry the next day, and noted that at least Harry looked like he’d gotten some sleep. Harry smiled at him when the door opened, but the smile was fleeting. The headache took the longest to dissipate. Harry was already frustrated with it long before it finally moved on, though. Every time he lost his train of thought, or asked the same question four times in a row, Louis could watch that flash of annoyance cross Harry’s face. 

Louis wasn’t allowed to stay that late again, though. Clearly him assisting Harry in sleeping went against the tactics the prison was using on Harry. But it didn’t really matter, because Louis began to encourage Harry to lay down and sleep during the day instead. Harry had balked and resisted the very idea because what would be the point of him using his lawyer’s visiting hours just to nap - they had a case to work on.

After several days of sleepless nights, Louis wore Harry down, until the boy fell asleep curled up to him, head pillowed by Louis’s lap, and Louis’s hand in his hand, face pressed into Louis’s stomach, eyes shielded from the light. That was when it occurred to Louis that maybe he was crossing an emotional line he really shouldn’t be. Because he could spend hours just watching Harry’s sleeping face. The boy looked years younger, all of his tension erased from his face. He looked peaceful like that, and that made him look gorgeous. Which was not a thought Louis should have about his own client. Harry was a silent sleeper, the weight of his head heavy and warm, and sometimes he would nuzzle closer to Louis, burying his face in Louis’s stomach more firmly and sigh, and that always made Louis’s stomach tie up in a knot.

Then of course, Louis ran into a very real realization he hadn’t foreseen when he’d insisted Harry sleep during the day. It became very obvious, very fast, that Harry suffered from nightmares. He didn’t know why that probably hadn’t occurred to him before. He’d never been there when Harry woke from sleeping, but that first day, after days of sleepless nights, he got to experience it first hand.

Harry slept for a few hours, face snuggled against Louis’s stomach, Louis’s hands slowly stroking through his curls, idly watching the side of Harry’s face that he could see. The peace on his face broke gradually. At first it was just sporadic grimaces, and then a frown seemed to cross his face. Louis watched it, frowning. His fingers paused in Harry’s hair. He could feel Harry trembling beneath his touch. And then Harry reeled back so hard, he nearly threw himself out of the bed. Louis caught him before he could teeter over the edge, and Harry reeled back harder, as if he meant to break free of the touch.

“Don’t fucking touch me -” Harry snarled, his voice raw. His eyes were bloodshot, speared through with a green so light it was nearly translucent and wet. Bewildered, Louis realized that his eyes were wet, that he was crying. That he had been crying before he even startled awake. The tears were on his face, dripping from his chin, his chest hitching with every harsh gasp.

“It’s just me,” Louis told him quickly. “You’re just - you almost - I’m sorry - I didn’t -” Louis felt flustered, breathing as hard as Harry was. The look in Harry’s eyes was wild, feral; one born entirely out of fear. Harry was still straining back against the hand Louis had pressed flat against his back, and Louis had moved half up on his knees to maintain that position. He could feel Harry’s full weight balanced precariously back against his hand, as Harry teetered on the edge of the bed. He could feel exactly how close he’d shifted to Harry to keep him from falling. He could feel it with every fast gasp that left Harry’s mouth and moved his entire chest and resonated through Louis’s entire body. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, feeling entirely lost in the look in Harry’s eyes.

Harry didn’t move for a very long moment, but eventually, sanity returned to his wild eyes, and with sanity came realization. It fell over Harry like a blanket, moving across his face like the setting sun, before tightening around Harry and suffocating him. And then finally, something very close to awkwardness dragged across Harry’s face. He fumbled to disentangle himself from this situation, but he couldn’t do that without touching Louis. Finally Harry put his hands on Louis’s shoulders and shifted his weight toward Louis, to shift both of them back fully onto the bed. Once Harry was back on his knees, Louis let his hands fall away from Harry’s back. Harry looked away from Louis and mumbled, “sorry.” His voice was deep, rough with sleep. His hair was wild, framing his face like a halo. Awkwardly, Harry shifted over to sit back down beside Louis on the bed, his back to the wall. 

Harry stared straight ahead, dragging an arm across his face, to rub away the wetness on his face. Louis stared ahead too, but that was mostly because he didn’t know how else to give Harry the privacy to do that without literally leaving the room, and he couldn’t imagine that him abruptly removing himself from the room would make Harry feel better.

But they didn’t really talk about this. The repercussions of living here, isolated, for as long as Harry had. The repercussions of his entire existence or how that made him feel. Louis had suspected that there had to be some kind of repercussions and that Harry could talk to him about them if he chose to, but Louis hadn’t ever felt right about prying. Of course, that internal decision had been made in the very beginning, before Louis had recklessly gotten so invested in Harry’s mental well being. Now, the urge to ask Harry if he wanted to talk about it itched restlessly beneath his skin. The urge to make Harry talk about it clogged his mind, the urge to believe that somehow talking to him would make everything better battered against his throat, clawing to get out. Louis pressed his lips together tightly just to contain that pathetic need. 

“I thought it would be better,” Harry finally admitted quietly. His voice still sounded sleep deep. Louis physically startled and then mentally chastised himself. “If I slept with you here,” he elaborated. “Like they wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t alone, like I would subconsciously know that I wasn’t alone. I didn’t mean for you to … see …” Harry let himself trail off, as if he didn’t even know how he meant to finish that explanation.

“It’s okay if I - I mean I don’t mind -” Louis started, floundering for a sufficient response. He wanted it to be encouraging, assuring, comforting. 

“I mind,” Harry cut in shortly. “I mind if you see.”

Louis frowned. “I don’t think they make you weak, Harry,” he started slowly, but he couldn’t force himself to stop staring straight ahead, as if they were having a conversation parallel to each other, rather than to each other. 

“I do,” Harry said, quieter. 

Louis tore his eyes away from +the wall to look at Harry to find that Harry was staring at that same wall, straight ahead. “They don’t -” he started.

“I don’t remember a lot,” Harry interrupted him. He wasn’t glaring at the wall. It wasn’t a forceful stare. It was almost like he saw something on that wall that Louis didn’t. Or maybe he didn’t see the wall at all. Maybe he didn’t see the room at all. There was no anger on Harry’s face. There was no reluctance. His face was almost blank. His entire face was - every part of it, except for his eyes. His eyes were filling back up with tears that hadn’t ever fully stopped.

“I don’t remember much of what happened, when I was imprisoned, after the rape. I remembered it hurt, but that was mostly healing from it, and that stopped hurting after a while. But in the beginning, they left me alone for a couple days. And then one day I realized that the door wasn’t locked. Hadn’t been locked the whole time. I just stayed there, because I expected it to be locked. And when I realized it wasn’t, I opened it, and I ran. Thought I was already dead. So I ran.” It all came out more like a confession, than a story. Harry grimaced, and the movement jarred the first tear loose, easing the path for the rest of them.

“And they - the guards - were waiting, like that was why they’d never locked the door. I got out of the front gate, just into the wilderness around the castle, and I ran. Hard. Like death itself was after me. I didn’t hear them coming, but they caught me, like it was a game. Like they were hunting me. They joked about me making it easy for them. About how they’d waited five days for a few seconds of fun.About how disappointing I was, how I should’ve done better, made it better for them. And then they laid into me. I forgot about it afterwards, for a while. Then a year ago, I started dreaming about it, until I could never forget about it again. They held me down. And punished me. For being bad. They cut down a switch, and tore off my shirt and hit me with it until I thought I had no skin left on my back.”

Louis inhaled sharply. He didn’t want to be here for this. He didn’t want to hear any of this. He didn’t want to see the hollowed out look on Harry’s face or the shattered look in his eyes, or how even his tone was, or how he never once moved to wipe away any of the tears. They just reached his chin and dripped off. It was like he didn’t even realize they were there anymore. It was like he didn’t realize he was there anymore. 

“Then they took off my pants. To get more skin. But they were over it. That game of punishment. Instead they held me down in the dirt, until I couldn’t smell anything but dirt and my own blood, and they fucked me. One after another. I don’t know what happened after that. I can’t remember what happens after that. I can’t remember how it ended. I can’t remember anything. For months. I can’t remember the trial. I can’t remember her death. I can’t remember my own sentencing or how I felt or what I thought or who the fuck I was, because none of that exists in my dreams. It’s just the feeling of that switch on my back, and their laughter in my ear and I can’t fucking remember anything else.” Steadily, Harry’s voice had gotten louder until he was shouting and Louis felt like he was drowning. He didn’t know how to fix this. And asking Harry if he wanted to talk about it wouldn’t make it better because that was exactly what Harry was doing right now. Talking about it. And Louis didn’t know how to make that into something good. 

Then suddenly Harry turned away from the wall, and turned those big tear filled eyes onto Louis, and his entire face crumbled and Louis surged forward, feeling tears in his own eyes, stabbing at the back of his throat until he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He wrapped his arms around Harry and pulled the boy into his arms and crushed him against his chest. “I forgot her name. I couldn’t remember what she called me or how her hand felt in my hair for the longest time, and now sometimes when I’m about to fall asleep, I hear her voice in my ear, calling me her pet, and I wish I could forget it again. I wish I didn’t remember it,” Harry whispered desperately into Louis’s neck. Finally, Harry let himself sob, shaking both of their bodies with the force of it.

Louis hugged him tighter. “I loved her,” Harry whispered, his voice thick, his arms around Louis tight enough to bruise.

“I know,” Louis whispered back. “I know, Haz, I know you did,” he promised, letting the boy cling to him.

Harry didn’t say anything else so Louis didn’t say anything else. They stayed like that for a long time. Just Harry clinging to Louis, and Louis hugging him back just as tightly. By the end of it, Harry’s breathing had evened out from the body shaking sobs, until the boy was breathing softly against his neck, until Harry was practically folded up in Louis’s lap, and Louis was determined to stay exactly like that, until Harry was ready to pull back. He planned on staying exactly where Harry wanted him to be, slowly stroking his fingers through Harry’s hair as the boy squeezed the life out of him. And Harry seemed content to never move again.

Until the fucking door opened. Louis felt an irrational surge of pure anger as a guard filled the open door way. He felt Harry tense in his arms, and Louis tightened his arms on the boy, as if he was in any position to actually protect him. The guard leveled Louis with an indifferent look. “Get up.”

Harry instinctively moved to obey, and Louis irrationally tightened his arms, holding the boy against him. “We’re not finished discussing his case,” he said evenly, and felt like a complete fucking child for it. 

“Lou, it’s fine,” he felt Harry mutter into his neck. He felt the vibrations of the boy’s lips against his neck and felt a shiver run down his spine, and hated himself for it. “I can get up.”

The guard didn’t seem to have the patience for that. He moved forward, reaching out to roughly sink a hand into Harry’s hair and jerk him off of the bed and to his feet. Harry was clumsy and made a noise of pain that brought Louis angrily to his feet. “Get your fucking hands off of him,” he roared.

The guard shoved Harry aside, and stepped in close to Louis, lifting a hand to hit him the same as he would have any other prisoner. Harry quickly forced himself back in between them. “He’s not a prisoner,” he said quickly to diffuse the situation. “Remember what I said, Lou - temper - remember -”

“Shut up,” the guard shoved Harry back out of the way, pushing him back against the wall. “Don’t fucking move.” Harry looked small and apprehensive, forcing himself to remain against the wall, his hair wild and his cheeks blotchy and raw. 

Louis’s gaze followed him, saw the pleading look in his eyes. The look that very clearly said _please do not fuck this up by getting yourself killed_ and forced himself to bite his tongue. “I apologize for my outburst,” he said, his tone careful and tight. “What do you need him for, visiting hours aren’t up yet.”

The guard snorted derisively. “Obviously. Slut’s got a visitor that’s not you for once.”

Harry swallowed hard. “Part of the charity fights,” he mumbled. “I can go -”

“Ain’t got much choice in that,” the guard cut in impatiently.

“What do you mean?” Louis pressed.

“They sold raffle tickets. It’s just a visit. You should probably go home. I’ll see you tomorrow -” Harry started, moving toward the door.

“Tickets for what,” Louis pressed.

“Don’t want to talk about it right now, _Lou_ ,” Harry said firmly, which was enough to make Louis drop it. Honestly, he really meant to drop it. It would be better discussed in private, anyway. Where Louis could fully react and break his hand against a wall and not have it be held against him.

But the guard clearly caught onto them and hugged an arm around Harry’s neck, dragging the boy in tight against his side. He was grinning now, as Harry grimaced. “Some rich asshole gets to spend the night with our resident rapist here. Doc cleared him.”

“I don’t understand,” Louis said stupidly. 

“It doesn’t matter - “ Harry started stubbornly.

“Pretty face like this?” The guard grabbed Harry’s chin roughly with his free hand, forcing Harry’s head up. Harry grimaced, and tried to pull his head out of the hold without having to use his hands. “The King thought it’d be nice to give one lucky lady - or guy I suppose - the chance to win this face. By lottery. Following every charity fight as soon as Doc medically clears it, coarse.”

“Are you fucking kid -” Louis started, when it started to make more sense. The king had raffled Harry off like some whore. Like he wasn’t a prisoner, completely vulnerable to the state, like he had any type of choice in his position - like he wasn’t - Louis wanted to go straight to the palace and punch him in his stupid fucking face.

“Don’t,” Harry started, jerking his head free of the guard’s touch. “Just breathe. It’s fine. It’s okay. I need you to not freak out.” Harry was practically pleading with Louis to keep his head. 

Louis exhaled harshly, forcing down his emotions. He owed Harry that, at least. The kid was right. “Okay,” he said calmly, and then scowled when the guard laughed at him.

“Got him on a leash, eh,” he muttered to Harry, as if they were friends, having a laugh at Louis’s expense. Harry made a face.

Louis scowled at the guard and then moved forward, shoving past him to leave the room. There was nothing more he could do here. He’d just have to wait, and pray that whatever was about to happen wouldn’t destroy Harry. But as he stalked down the long hallway, he couldn’t get the image of Harry pressed against Louis, crying about what had happened to him four years ago out of his head.


	7. Like they killed me

When Louis returned to Harry the next day, he forced Harry to stand up, so he could look over him, like he was a fucking doctor. Harry patiently stood there, as Louis turned his head from side to side and then circled around him. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see, but there weren’t any new marks. Nothing visible had changed. Then Harry sat back down and Louis watched him closely, suspiciously, but Harry didn’t seem to show any kind of pain with any of his movements.

Reluctantly, Louis sat down too. “So what happened?” He prodded.

Harry sighed as if he expected this bluntness from Louis. “Let’s talk about my case,” he suggested instead.

Louis scowled. “Yesterday, you -”

“We don’t have to talk about that,” Harry interrupted quietly. “Like am I the only one paying attention? It’s distractionary bullshit so you’re too busy freaking out over what could’ve or did happen instead of what we should talk about - my case. So could you just shut the fuck up and do your job?” 

Harry’s tone remained quiet, but the sentiment in it hit Louis like a punch to the chest. Harry, while he had been withdrawn and formal in the beginning of this whole thing, had never been outwardly hostile or dismissive of Louis’s naivety, and Louis could acknowledge quite well that there had been a fair bit of naivety. If anything, Harry had always seemed amused by it. Patient, most of the time. Now, he sounded annoyed and frustrated and that brought a frown to Louis’s face. It also silenced him quite well. At least, for several seconds, but Louis had never really done well with being silenced.

“If you just told me what _did_ happen, then I wouldn’t have to be distracted by what could have -” Louis started again, calm but stubborn.

“Either focus on my case or get the fuck out,” Harry interrupted him harshly. 

Once more Louis fell silent, but this time he was outright glowering. They both were. Either they came to an impasse or Louis had to shove them back over, because Harry seemed intent on cutting off that entire conversation.

“Fine,” Louis bit out, eventually. “Parliament has set a date for you. In light of Grimshaw’s treason, they’ve determined that based on the grounds of corruption, Grimshaw’s word of your crime isn’t enough to continue your imprisonment. So they allowed a retrial. We’ve got four months to figure out everything that can be used against you and how to combat it. There will be no jury. If you’re to be freed, you’re to be freed through a judge alone.” Which was a decent amount of time to mount a plan for this trial but it also meant Harry would need to survive four more fights possibly, if they meant to force Harry to participate in every fight. Eight more fights, counting the stupid charity fights. Four more nights promised to the highest bidder in addition to that. 

“You were banking on a jury,” Harry pointed out. His tone didn’t sound as harsh as it had before, but it hadn’t yet returned to the slow, mellow drawl Harry usually used.

“I know that,” Louis snapped. “If the judge wasn’t willing to hear us out, he wouldn’t have agreed to a retrial in the first place. It should still be fine.” 

Harry inclined his head. “So where do we start then?” He asked. 

“They kept extensive records of your interrogation.” Louis reached for his bag and withdrew several files from it. “You need to go through them and see if you remember anything. If you don’t, then we’ll have to do a lot more work. We’ll have to look into medical records, to see if you were ever admitted off these records, interview guards that might’ve grown a conscience in the last four years, scour their stories for incongruencies, catch them in lies, if they haven’t grown a conscience. Your memory might give us somewhere to start.”

Harry frowned and hesitated. “I know you don’t want to actually remember anything that happened here, but their gross mistreatment of you will help us overturn their verdict of you. It’s inhumane, made worse if we really stick the ‘it was all based on the word of corrupt asshole’ landing we’re aiming for. We can’t hold anything back, Harry. I’ll uh … I’ll leave you with the files. They’re all copies, so if anything happens to them, we’ll still have access to them. You can go over them at your own pace and …”

“I won’t recognize half the words, Lou,” Harry said softly and Louis stopped. He’d forgotten. He’d forgotten what they had been doing preceding that blasted charity fight. He’d forgotten Harry’s inability to read beyond a second grade level, and he’d forced Harry to remind him _again_ about that shortcoming.

Louis swallowed hard. He’d honestly just been trying to give Harry the privacy to rediscover his own history, without an audience. He’d been trying to help. “Right,” he muttered. “I forgot.”

“Just read it out loud,” Harry said impatiently. Except Louis was still staring at him, and Harry had his eyes down, staring hard at his hands. Louis didn’t read it, but it took Harry a while to make a noise of impatience. “You’ve already read it. You already know what it says. You know more about it than me, so just get on with it.” 

Louis swallowed hard and looked down at the transcript resolutely, and swallowed again. “July second, year 1098,” he started quietly. “Harold Styles, arrested of rape and abuse of Lady Pierre. Lady Pierre showed bruising and vaginal bleeding, and prone to bouts of mad babbling.” He swallowed hard again. “I assume that means that she denied your involvement and they wrote it off as madness,” he added, somehow even quieter. Harry was frowning down at his hands, but inclined his head slightly, to show Louis that he heard him.

“Styles appears to be the victim of a struggle, with bruising to his face and chest. They took that as evidence of the assault. Styles is placed in a cell to await further investigation. July third, year 1098. Styles is given forty lashes for disobedience toward Grimshaw. July seventh, year 1098. Styles is admitted to the infirmary, to treat a blood infection. July twelfth, 1098, Styles is returned to his cell. Do you remember anything that happened in the infirmary? You were there for five days.”

Harry shook his head slightly. “I remember being restrained. But it was mostly dreams. I was delirious, so it was hard to remember what was real, because nothing looked real, and since nothing looked real, it’s hard to remember anything that happened. Since I dismissed it as dreams.”

“Grimshaw admitted a confession, during your trial. Claimed you confessed while in the infirmary. Apologized, begged for mercy,” Louis said quietly.

Harry scoffed derisively. “I doubt I was that delirious,” he drawled dryly, his voice hardening. 

“July thirteenth, 1098, Styles attempted to escape his prison cell, and resisted arrest. Had to be punished en route. Received further punishment, post arrest. Received thirty lashes. Jesus. They whipped you seventy times over the course of a week and a half. This is madness, this is inhumane - there is no way you were healed from the first lashing -”

“I don’t remember it,” Harry mumbled down at his hands. Clearly he must’ve remembered some of it. Louis assumed that this - the attempted escape, was when Harry had been … when… what had inspired his dreams, the only thing he claims to remember, happened. That was the punishment en route, Louis assumed. But what had happened to force Harry to remember that, but not any of the pain that presumably immediately followed it? Why had his mind decided to check out for the lashing, but not the actual fucking rape? How had Harry even survived that? They whipped him with a switch until Harry felt like he had no skin left on his back, and then they took him in and whipped him thirty more times. The amount of physical trauma that would’ve done … coupled with the earlier record that clearly detailed exactly how much physical damage they’d done to him over the course of his rape..the broken ribs, the broken collar bone. This was the point of no return for Harry’s mind, which likely meant that either his mind checked him out following severe mental trauma, or he suffered more damage during that rape than he or the record noted. Such as a brain injury.

Louis cleared his throat, forcing himself to continue. “July 21st, Styles admitted back to the infirmary for a blood infection. Treated for malnutrition and internal bleeding.” He licked his lips. “July 27th, Styles returned to his holding cell.” And then very quietly, he says, “August first, official investigation into the crime committed begins. They waited a whole bloody month to even begin investigating the crime.”

Harry shifted uncomfortably, raking a hand back through his disheveled hair. “August third, Styles is requested for questioning. He claims his innocence. Styles claims…. Nicolas Grimshaw committed the act instead. Styles is punished for the act of treason, and receives the house brand.”

Harry unconsciously lowered his hand to touch his hip. Louis followed the movement with his eyes, but Harry’s hip was covered by his shorts, and he couldn’t see the brand. He’d heard of the brand. It was generally given to runaway slaves or indentured servants who attempted to flee before their bargain had expired. Louis hadn’t even heard of it being used like this - not since the era of rampant slavery, not for centuries. Back then, it made the slave a pariah, it made them incapable of living free. It also sentenced them to immediate death should they be captured during war times. There was no point of an army capturing the other country’s slave, if that slave is branded with the house insignia - it made them tainted goods, universally. But Harry hadn’t been a slave or an indentured servant. Harry had been a free man. And the insignia had never been used as a punishment against a free man before - as far as Louis knew.

Maybe it had been - maybe that was also in the public records. Just … nobody ever cared enough to check.

“August fifth, Styles is uncooperative with questioning. Requires restraint and frequent punishment, both of which remains fruitless.”

Louis glanced at Harry, and Harry shook his head slightly, as if to answer the unasked question. No, he doesn’t know what that means. He doesn’t know how uncooperative he was while being restrained. “August seventh, Styles is admitted to the infirmary. Treated for malnourishment, dehydration, sleep deprivation, four broken ribs, two broken fingers, blood loss and … a blood infection. How the bloody hell did you never die from infection, mate,” he muttered. “I presume the brand wasn’t treated right and got infected.”

“Couldn’t walk right for two months, it radiated down my entire leg,” Harry agreed, and then glanced over and met Louis’s arched eyebrow, because that was definitely a memory of something.

Harry shrugged. “I feel it sometimes when I wake up. A burning pain at my hip. Like a phantom pain. Gives me a limp. Can feel it down to the bone.”

Louis nodded and returned his gaze to the transcript. “August 15th, attempt to continue interrogating Styles is postponed. Resuscitation of the prisoner is admitted.”

“What does that mean?” Harry asked quietly. “Resus...what’s it mean?”

“It means something happened during the interrogation that … stopped your heart or your breathing or …”

“Like they killed me?” Harry asked, glancing over at Louis long enough that Louis could meet his eyes.

Slowly, Louis inclined his head. “Yeah,” he answered quietly. “You were unresponsive for twenty three minutes. After resuscitation, they admitted you back into the infirmary, and while you were alive, it took you three days to open your eyes. You were in a type of coma. It would appear that Grimshaw accused you of … faking it, so they attempted to reverse the coma with electroshock therapy. Clearly, it didn’t work, because you were not faking it. Which could be … it’s possible that electrocution fucks with the brain a bit, and causes the loss of memories. It’s possible this caused you loss of memory. I’m not a doctor, obviously, so I’m not sure how likely it is that it then caused the loss of your future memories.”

Louis fiddled with the corner of the transcript in his hands, waiting for Harry to ask any more questions, but Harry didn’t seem to want to. After a while, Harry just nodded his head and Louis forced himself to continue. “Two weeks after you woke up, they stuck you back into an interrogation cell and started the process all over again. I can paraphrase the rest, because it’s shit. All of it is shit. This entire thing is just pure shit. They asked you three questions. That was the entire interrogation process. Why did you do it? Did you mean to kill her? And who told you to do it. Before your coma, you accused Grimshaw. After your coma, you only responded with one question, every time. Who. Which, mostly just pissed Grimshaw off. The interrogations mostly just turned into them torturing you. For the remaining six months. It was so frequent that the record itself only mentions you every couple of weeks, rather than daily. Sleep deprivation, food withholding, broken bones. He never branded you again, but there are several instances in the record that notes the carving of words into your …”

“Yeah,” Harry murmured when Louis struggled to find a better word than _body_. “Found most of those. Can’t remember them happening. Can’t remember being surprised they were there, though.”

“How does that …” Louis licked his lips. “Could you explain how it feels in your head for me? You explained the beginning of your life relatively fine, as if you clearly remember it. And you’re clearly coherent right now. So how does that gap in your memory work for you?”

Harry shrugged, frowning. “If you read a book that has three parts, and the middle part of it is missing … The beginning parts of it still matter to the last part. It still affects it a bit, yeah? It still leads up to it a bit. But the middle part is the climax, it’s something important that happened, that directly, actively causes the last part, and I can’t remember any of that climax. I can remember being a kid and how Pierre treated me, and how I felt about it very vividly, but there’s parts of me …. Things about me that affect who I am as a person, that I can’t explain or remember, but they still actively affect me. Like I have no control over it. One day, I woke up. Is how it feels. I woke up here. Mentally, I was the same person as the person they put into that cell, but an entire year was just fucking gone. Like I went to sleep one night, and got hit by a fucking train, and woke up a year later in this broken body, with all these ticks I don’t remember developing, in a situation I don’t remember getting into. They had to put me through physical therapy before I could fight because I was still limping, because I couldn’t make my fingers work right, because my posture was fucked, and my balance was nonexistent, and I couldn’t speak more than three words at a time without losing my train of thought. And I woke up six months into that physical therapy. They had to explain my entire situation to me. And then put me through another six months of therapy because my coherency seemed to physically undo the work I had already put into it. It put me back at square one. Except for the talking. The talking seemed entirely dependent on me being mentally awake. But that’s the thing - I don’t know what the fuck I was like then. Like if I was total fucking vegetable, sleep shuffling toward my inevitable death, or if I was like this - normal, just completely fucked in developing any memories. I don’t know who I was then. I don’t know if that’s why I don’t remember. Just because I stopped existing for a while. I don’t know how I reacted during the trial or her death or my verdict. But crowds make me uncomfortable now and they never did before this. The complete darkness bothers me more now and it didn’t before. I get cold easily now and I don’t remember it being this painful before. My body changed in ways that I didn’t get to live through, but I get to observe like some third party participant or some shite. That’s how it feels, I guess.”

That was a more complete answer than Louis had expected, and he was ashamed to acknowledge that he’d felt mesmerized by it. Harry’s rolling deep drawl, the way his words seemed to bleed effortlessly into each other, almost like a slurring, while still remaining slow. It was the most Harry had ever spoken to him. “Can I see the brand?” Louis asked next. 

Harry held Louis’s calm gaze, frowning at him. But obediently, he unfolded his body and rose to his feet. Harry hooked his fingers in the waistband of his shorts and pulled the right side of them down, only until he bared his hip bone. While the boy was tall and slender, he didn’t appear significantly underfed here - not until his hips were visible, it seemed. His hip bones protrude slightly from the skin, and there emblazoned on the right hip, seemingly distinctly over the bone, as if done on purpose, was the stark Royal house insignia. It wasn’t exactly large, but the scaring looked deep, an angry, vibrant pink, bubbled up but clearly defined. While the brand had long since healed, the evidence that it had not healed correctly at first was clear. It had scarred more significantly than it was meant to, the scar turning ugly, visibly painful.

Louis swallowed hard. “You said you found … what they had carved into …”

Harry shifted closer to Louis and lifted his arm, as if he already knew what Louis wanted to see next, and was prepared to show him. Along his ribs, closer to his armpit, Louis could make out semi small lettering, white against Harry’s skin now. _Fucked_ is what the lettering said. And then Harry turned his arm, extending it to Louis. Louis didn’t see it at first, but he took Harry’s arm and pulled it closer. There, close to his wrist, were more lettering. _Whore_ was what this one said. Slowly, one after another, Harry drew Louis’s eyes to scars he hadn’t noticed before. Scars that seemed to blend in with other scars. Scars that didn’t even look like words until he stared at them closely. Scars that were put there with knives and precision and purpose. Words tattooed into his skin forever. _Fucked, whore, trash, rapist, traitor_ were harsh but the last one Harry showed him, one on the back of his neck, made Louis pause sharply. Right there, in tiny script, at the base of Harry’s neck, shrouded by his hair, but so very dangerously close to his spine, the letters were clear, and precise. _Good Boy._ They must’ve held Harry down for these, and this one - god, Louis couldn’t even imagine. Harry’s head pressed into the floor, as someone with a knife meticulously, carved each letter into the back of his neck. How still Harry must’ve laid in agonizing pain, or else threaten paralyzing himself. Louis stroked his fingers over it.

“That’s what the king called you,” he said quietly. 

“I can’t see it,” Harry said just as quietly, his own fingers stroking over it. “I just know it’s there. It feels like …”

“Words?” Louis asked. “It’s what the king called you. It says Good Boy.” And then his gaze jerked down, toward Harry’s wrist. And all the other words. “They knew you couldn’t read. They wrote on you. These nasty … these bullshit … and they knew you wouldn’t even be able to fucking read them. There was no reason to - what was the point of it if you couldn’t even see this -”

Harry turned back around to Louis. “I can read most of them now,” he admitted quietly. “It was the first thing … it’s what I did after we …. Practiced. I just couldn’t see that one, didn’t really know if it was really anything or just a stray whip I don’t remember hitting me there.”

“What happened to you last night, Haz,” Louis said softly, so softly.

He half expected Harry to recoil, to violently shut down the conversation, to shut down the entire cadence of this entire session. It had gotten so soft, so vulnerable that he expected Harry to withdraw himself from it, build his walls back up, purposefully blocking Louis out.

But Harry didn’t. “I didn’t have sex,” he told Louis quietly, almost as if he felt the need to assure Louis that what he had feared had happened, hadn’t really happened, that it made things better. “The raffle affords the winner the night. They get a room, and a bed, and anything else they request. But the lady that won was nice. Lonely. Rich. She just wanted to feel good.”

Louis frowned. “What did she expect you to do to make her feel good if you didn’t have sex -”

“I went down on her and then braided her hair, and then let her braid my hair, and then I sang her to sleep,” Harry interrupted. 

Louis blinked at Harry and then rolled his eyes, feeling the sheer softness of the session shatter. “Oral sex is still sex, you fucking knob,” he muttered. “What bloody princess has a prisoner eat her out and then sing her a fucking lullaby.”

Harry shrugged, sitting back down. “It was kind of nice,” he admitted quietly. “She seemed lonely and sad and trapped. Nobody ever touched her hair or gave her an orgasm. Even though she’s fucking married. And it was a real bed. There was even a blanket and a shower in the room. She let me use the shower for an entire hour. The shower had hot water. I haven’t had a hot shower in … I’ve never had a hot shower. It wasn’t bad like I expected it to be. She let me sleep in the bed with her afterwards.”

While Louis still disagreed on the entire principle of it, he did feel silently grateful that Harry didn’t view it as something horrible, as Louis had feared it would be. But that didn’t really help his emotions on the matter, not if this was going to be monthly. Not every winner is going to want Harry to just braid their hair and sing to them. Not every winner is just going to be some lonely woman. It felt a lot like a game of russian roulette and Louis was starting to dread the coming month.


	8. Prized Cow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry, it's been a hot minute. But this chapter's a little bit longer, so hopefully that'll make up for the wait?
> 
> There's another cage fight, and it does get a bit graphic, so warning for gore.

Louis found it increasingly difficult to focus on anything outside of the realm of this one case for this one person. Meticulously, he devoted every visiting hour to carefully deconstructing every single wall Harry had stubbornly erected. Louis felt impressed with himself, for how single mindedly he was going about all of this, but if he were being honest with himself, he had to acknowledge that none of those walls would have come down, if Harry hadn’t allowed them to. Harry was allowing himself to be open and honest, likely because by being honest, it allowed Harry to fully express the depths of his own frustration. 

Through honesty, Harry quickly became more vocally frustrated and short tempered. Harry expressed a deep disdain for being coddled, but oftentimes seemed to yearn for that same coddling. He expressed disinterest in Louis doing anything in the way of defending Harry from his guards, while also entertaining this entire trial, which itself was a defense for Harry. But worse, seemingly for Harry, seemed to be that the closer they got to the date of the trial, the more restless Harry became with his own predicament. While Louis had visited Harry during periods of sleep before, Harry rarely seemed to sleep now. More often than not, Harry was pacing his small holding cell when Louis was allowed in to see him. While Harry had had patience before to slowly meander his way through learning to read, it became difficult to direct his focus toward something so tedious now. 

But all of those tendencies became strikingly obvious as vulnerabilities Harry allowed himself to express in front of Louis and Louis alone. They all disappeared as soon as a guard entered the cell. In front of guards Harry became withdrawn and silent, obedient to a fault. 

“You have to calm your mind,” Louis found himself sighing. He’d forgone the usual work attire of a suit, and settled on dressing in something much more casual. Which made it all the more easy to stretch himself out fully on Harry’s uncomfortable bed, while he watched the boy pace the length of his cell. He could practically feel the trapped agitation rolling off of Harry, and felt exhausted by it. 

“Stop saying that,” Harry snapped. He was turned away from Louis, but Louis could see him pause and deliberately take a deep, calmly breath. He could see the muscles in Harry’s back twitch as he forced them to relax, so he chose not to take much offense to the tone. If anything, he was thrilled by it. Louis could hardly function around anybody as meek as the boy had originally been. He felt much more comfortable around prickly bastards.

“The next fight is in three days,” Harry said, his tone much quieter and less harsh than it had started. 

“You’ve survived plenty of fights so far,” Louis said plaintively. 

“Yeah but I hadn’t planned on surviving those,” Harry said stubbornly. “Every one of those I had gone in planning and expecting to let myself get killed and then chickened out halfway through them. I’ve been attempting suicide every other month for the last four years. I’m just not good at it.”

Louis made a face. “Well that’s not … I don’t much like that story,” he muttered.

Harry made a quiet noise of amusement. “I’ve never fought in a fight before that I want to win. And they’ll be able to tell. That I’m trying. They’ve been going easy on me because I’m not trying.”

“Easy? That last bloke weighed a half metric ton, he half near crushed your windpipe, mate, in what world is that considered _going easy_?” Louis asked incredulously. 

“He was slow and stupid,” Harry said dismissively. “I gassed myself out, thinking it’d be easier to die if I physically couldn’t stop it.”

“But you stabbed out his eye at the last second - you physically could’ve just laid there,” Louis pointed out.

“I chickened out,” Harry snapped defensively, and Louis balked at him. He wasn’t quite sure why this conversation was taking such an aggressive turn. Chickening out of committing suicide was a good thing here. He was already Harry’s lawyer at that point. He would’ve been pissed. And maybe a little heart broken. If the dumbass had actually died. 

“Well I don’t think I consider that a bad thing,” Louis snapped back, shockingly defensive himself. “I don’t think we’re using the right tone of voice for these words either,” he added, failing to lose any of that aggression. 

Harry made another snort, and then resumed his pacing. “If I start trying, they’ll stop giving me dumb meatheads to fight. And what if I’m not good enough to fight psychos who can actually use strategy? I’ve never been trained. You saw that with Grimshaw and the King. They were better than me.”

“But you beat Grimshaw,” Louis pointed out, gentling his own tone.

“Because I didn’t like him,” Harry said, back to being dismissive.

“But you still beat -”

“He killed Pierre. I was angry with him. I used that anger to kill him. I’m not going to have that anger going into every fight,” Harry interrupted impatiently. 

“You could,” Louis continued rationally. “Aren’t you angry? With your predicament? With what happened to Pierre? With your entrapment? With the loss of you family, and your future, and this entire mockery of a justice system? Doesn’t that enrage you? You can carry that anger with you, in your gut, everywhere you go. If you dig deep enough, it’ll be there.”

Harry frowned, pausing to look over at Louis, who looked too damn comfortable, in this mind numbing cell. “Ah, see, look at that face,” Louis said brightly. “You look angry at the very sight of me. You can add that to the anger already in your gut. Anger’s easy. It’s like a fire. You can start it, but you can rarely control it. It’ll continue to grow. Once you got a handle on it, you just need to remember to douse it every now and then, or it’ll consume you.”

“You sound like a shrink,” Harry muttered.

Louis shrugged, folding his arms up beneath his head to form a makeshift pillow. “Knowing how emotions and people work tend to help with the whole, trial thing. That’s how we got here, innit? Would’ve never offered to represent you if I thought you’d reject the offer. But your body language practically exuded …” Louis trailed off and shrugged again, gesturing vaguely toward Harry, as if to say isn’t it obvious?

Harry was still staring down at him, frowning at him. “Come off it, stop looking at me like that,” Louis muttered. “You’re not entirely predictable. None of this has been predictable, obviously,” he elaborated, waving a hand vaguely between himself and Harry. “You’ve got a whole story’s worth in you. A whole history. You haven’t realized the power that gives - something as simple as motivation. Motivation is the kinetic energy that powers us, fuels us. It’s our power, our gas. They can’t take that from you. All they can do is trick you into giving it over to them and I've planted myself right here to ensure you never get tricked, haven’t I? That face - bloody knock it off, yeah?”

Harry snorted, finally looking away. “Fancy yourself a motivational speaker,” he muttered. 

“I prefer to view me self as an _Empowerment speaker_ ,” Louis said immediately, earning a much louder snort from Harry. “Now don’t you let yourself forget that Mr. Styles,” Louis continued, unperturbed. 

So it continued like that. With little else to do trial wise, Louis focused on getting inside of Harry’s head, centering him. Harry, whether he meant to or not, allowed Louis to do that. He allowed Louis to coax him mentally off of ledges built from pure restless anxiety. He allowed Louis to stumble his way through meditation seminars - which amounted to little more than Louis forcing them to sit on the floor, with their legs crossed, saying _ooohm_ at random intervals - even after those seminars just plainly didn’t do much help for anything. Louis had a high, sharp voice that got a lot less formal and a lot more casual the more time they spent together and it was the most soothing sound Harry had ever heard. He didn’t have to speak at all during some visitations, content to let Louis use up the allotted time telling Harry anecdotes or stories from his own childhood. Toward the end, Louis brought in books and read to Harry until a guard came to kick him out. Louis proved endlessly patient, every time Harry’s slow, low drawl interrupted him to ask for the definition of a word he didn’t recognize. Harry would get that look on his face, the one of determined concentration and nod, like he was committing the word to memory and Louis would continue reading. 

It felt … easy. Like a break. Not just from the arena or the case, but from society itself. Louis would force himself to be open with Harry and he could see Harry slowly opening up to him. Harry allowed himself to lounge with Louis, relax around him. Which must have been unheard for Harry. Even before his imprisonment, Harry couldn’t have had it easy, watching every word he said, every movement he made. But with Louis, that began to fall away. He laid beside Louis and let Louis absentmindedly play with his hair while reading and it was...Louis wasn’t quite sure but he never wanted that to end. 

But this couldn’t last forever. Eventually, the date Harry had been dreading arrived. On that day, his visitation was cancelled entirely. Harry doubted Louis had known - otherwise he would’ve told Harry. Louis was better at communicating than Harry was but it helped something relax inside of Harry - to know the man’s future intentions. 

On the day, Harry was left alone in his cell. He didn’t receive meals, he didn’t receive visitation. The long hours seemed to stretch on endlessly, which was likely the point. By the time a guard came to collect him, he felt mentally exhausted. But this was different. Rather than dragging Harry from the cell and to the showers, the guard crowded into Harry’s space until Harry was efficiently backed into a wall. 

“You’re the prized cow now, ain’t you?” The man murmured and Harry frowned hard at the man’s shoulder, agitated that he couldn't force his eyes up, to read the meaning of that sentence on the guard’s face. He recognized this guard but didn’t know his name. They didn’t wear name tags and they weren’t partial to formal introductions. 

“I don’t know -“ he started slowly and then stopped when meaty fingers fisted in his hair, jerking his head back. 

“Don’t talk, whore,” the man sneered. “The raffle tickets for the charity ball you’re in next month went on sale early. Sold the equivalent of a years salary in a matter of hours. If you die today, you’ll sign the death warrant of your mother, of your sister. Of that joke you call a lawyer. You get what I’m saying. You die, they die too.”

Harry swallowed hard and forced his hands still by pressing them back against the stone wall. The fingers in his hair tightened, pulling back until a cry of pain was dragged forcefully out of him. The guard shook his head, using the hand in his hair as an anchor and shouted, “do you understand, whore,” into Harry’s upturned face. 

“Yes,” Harry bit out tightly through his clenched teeth. 

“You’ve already cost the state enough money. It’s time you start paying it back,” the guard continued, speaking as if any of this were true, as if he were personally affected by whatever Harry had cost the state. “Now, I’m going to do you a solid. Gonna give you a little favor. You can pay me back for it after the fight, yeah.”

And then Harry felt a sharp pain in the side of his exposed neck and he tried to flinch away but the hand tangled in his hair felt like iron, chaining him to the spot. And then the pain slowly diminished in a rapidly spreading warmth. It closed up his throat and made it hard to breath as it traveled from his neck and into his chest. 

Harry felt like he could physically feel the air rattling in his lungs as he shakily exhaled. “We call this an upper,” the guard grunted appreciatively, pocketing the emptied syringe and harshly patted Harry’s cheek with his now empty hand. “Don’t worry, we haven’t drugged your opponent. Gave him similar motivations as you. If it goes according to plan, he’ll make the show good and then die. Unless he doesn’t give a shit about his family. For your sake, let’s hope he does.”

Harry found it hard to concentrate on his words, but he felt like he could physically feel them, crawling in through his ears, cluttering around his brain. He became so focused on the errant words in his head that he missed whatever words followed them. 

And then the fingers slid out of his hair and grabbed his collar, briefly strangling Harry, until Harry realized that he was supposed to be walking and stumbled forward. The walk was long and disorienting. The shower was worse. The cold water suddenly felt like knives. Then he was pulled from the shower and hastily dried before being forced into a pair of shorts and led out to the arena. 

He was afforded a few minutes to lean his heated cheek against the metal bars and attempt to collect himself. Vaguely - he felt pissed. But latching onto that elusive emotion proved difficult. He’d never fought drugged before and this drug was a fumbling, disorienting one. Like they meant for him to lose, despite what he was told.

Harry didn’t clearly see his opponent until the man had him slammed up against the cage link of the arena wall. He seemed to have missed the start of this fight. Missed the entrances, the announcer, the cheer of the bullshit audience - all of it. Like he wasn’t a participant or something. That was probably bad. He should really start focusing. Like right now. Like stop thinking. Like tune the fuck back in. 

Harry gasped audibly as his back hit the chain link again. Goddamnit. He was still doing it. 

The man in front of him was huge. He was easily twice as thick as Harry around the middle, his shoulders broad but much more defined than the last opponent. As if there were a secret training room somewhere in this prison. There was real strength in his hands, real rage on his face. A jawline that could likely cut glass - that last part wasn’t relevant, Harry really did need to focus. 

He didn’t realize he’d been punched until his mouth was so full of blood, he nearly choked on it. Harry coughed, and then spat out the blood and then dodged the next swing so hard, he tripped and fell. 

At least he caught himself with his hands and not his face. An arm wrapped around his throat, and then another wrapped around his waist, bodily lifting him from the ground and back against a very solid, very firm chest. And then those arms began to tighten. Slowly. As if they had all the time in the world to play with him. Harry gasped in a final, shallow breath before the arm around his neck grew so tight, he couldn’t breathe. 

He felt the body behind him shake and distantly heard a breathy laugh against his ear. “They fucked you up,” the man behind him said into his ear. “Making this really hard for me. I should just snap your neck now. Put us both out of our miseries.” 

Harry squirmed, because that was the opposite of what he wanted. But the squirming was minimal; the arm around his waist had pinned him rather effectively to the much larger body behind him. “Keep that up, and this might turn into a different show than the one these leeches paid for,” the man breathed against him. “Though I doubt they’d mind.”

Harry froze and his opponent shoved him away so forcefully, he crumbled to his knees, gasping in air so violently, he could hear nothing else. It sounded painful. It felt painful. It felt like the insides of his throat was cut to pieces. He couldn’t stop coughing. His vision had tunneled, narrowed down until all he could see was the swaying ground beneath his hands. He couldn’t see where his opponent had gone. He couldn’t hear him. He couldn’t hear anything. Fuck. 

He needed to get it together. He needed to focus. Before he was ready, a hand slipped into Harry’s hair, physically dragging him drunkenly back to his feet. And then Harry was bodily thrown back against the fencing, like a rag doll. The chain link was starting to scratch at his bare back, but Harry had a plan. 

It wasn’t really a plan, so much as a decision. The drug was disorienting. It was making it hard for him to fight the way he always had before - calculative. So he decided, he would roll with it. He wouldn’t let himself be disoriented. He wouldn’t be able to wait out his opponent, but maybe he could make it work. Maybe that didn’t mean he had to die here, today. If he focused on the pain, he felt pain on levels he’d never experienced before. He could feel it in his bones, in his very nerve endings. But if he didn’t think about the pain … he felt nothing. It was like it didn’t even exist. If he didn’t think about fear or exhaustion - it didn’t exist. 

Maybe that was the point of the drug. 

Harry hit the ground again, catching himself on his hands again. He didn’t remember getting hit but he forced himself not to even think about it - and when he did that, he couldn’t even pinpoint where he’d been hit. Nothing hurt. Harry scrambled back to his feet and moved. And it got a lot easier after that. 

Harry didn’t get hit less - this man seemed to have a good, strong aim, and caught Harry frequently. But none of it tripped him up. Harry fought sloppy, and he couldn’t even be sure how hard he was hitting back, because he couldn’t feel any pain in his hands. Every time Harry fell, he got back up. Endurance didn’t exist, because he couldn’t feel exhaustion. He didn’t know how long they fought. It was long enough for the blood on his face to dry and crack. It was long enough for the lines of exhaustion in his opponent to begin to weigh the man down, forcing his limbs to swing as drunkenly and recklessly as Harry’s did. 

It was long enough for the audience to get restless and bored. Harry glanced away from his opponent toward the audience - not something he did often during these fights. He wasn’t dumb enough to take his eyes off the man trying to kill him, usually. But he forgot and glanced away, toward the audibly restless audience. And that slight focus heightened the sound, until it was all he could hear. And then he felt the fencing against his back again, his opponent pressing so hard against him, he could feel the man’s breath panting against his cheek. 

He felt something sharp press against his hand and flinched. “Do it,” the man panted impatiently, pressing against Harry’s hand harder. Harry glanced down and saw a knife pressed against his hand. He curled his fingers around it. “Quit fucking wasting my time,” the man hissed. “I’m not supposed to kill you, so stop fucking with me, just do it.” The man lifted his hands and curled them around Harry's neck and squeezed hard, bodily lifting him until Harry couldn’t touch the ground, or feel anything but the sharp cut of the fencing against his back. Harry lifted the knife, and nearly dropped it when it bumped against the man’s side. He panicked and pushed the tip hard against his opponents ribs and then dragged it up, slicing up along his ribs. 

He was dropped and then his opponent was falling too. Harry scrambled forward, jerking the knife free from where it had been lodged, right underneath the man’s armpit and went to stab it into the side of his neck, but he missed and buried the blade into the hollow of his cheek instead. The man spluttered and coughed and Harry flinched when specks of blood spattered across his face, but he could see the blade of the knife through the man’s open mouth and he felt like puking. “Fuck,” he wheezed. “Fuck. Sorry. Fuck. Didn’t - didn’t mean to -“

He messily jerked the knife free again, accidentally dropped it, and fumbled to pick it back up again. This time, he managed to bury it in the man’s throat. But he must’ve missed the right part, because the man jerked and soundlessly gurgled for what felt like forever before lying still. 

Harry didn’t move. He stayed there, hands violently shaking, on top of a dead man he didn’t even know the name of. 

And then he blinked and suddenly he was in the infirmary, shackled to a hospital bed. Harry looked down, and saw his hands, long and bony and covered in bruises, knuckles scraped raw and in the early stages of scabbing over. His head throbbed dangerously at the slight movement and he groaned. The groan was painful, which made him almost want to groan again. 

A head bobbed up sharply from the chair beside the bed - which seemed weird because there weren’t usually chairs beside beds - this wasn’t an actual hospital. But somebody had made the effort of finding a chair and then choosing the only occupied bed to sit beside and - Harry’s gaze finally traveled the distance from his hands to the head of hair and he found himself startled to recognize that face. “Lou?” He croaked. 

Speaking, for whatever reason, also made his head throb dangerously. He tried to lift his hands to his head, thinking that maybe he should hold it, to make sure nothing fell out of it or broke apart from it. The loud, jarring clang of the shackles stopped his movement from getting too far, but also made his head throb.

“Harry,” Louis rasped back. His voice sounded thick. Like from sleep or yelling or crying. 

“What’s wrong?” Harry asked, and didn’t understand why Louis laughed weakly instead of answering. 

“How’re you feeling?” Louis asked instead and Harry frowned because that didn’t have the words of an answer. “You took a bit of a beating out there.”

“Don’ ‘member’t,” Harry mumbled, trying to work through how heavy his tongue felt and how painful talking turned out to be. “Feel dead,” he added, and tried to lift his hand to touch his head, but the shackles loudly stopped him short again. Harry grimaced. “Verdict?” He asked instead. 

Louis sighed. “Broken ribs, concussion, about a thousand different cuts, you got a pretty gnarly cut on your back, fractured your wrist, broke your bloody hand on his face. Bruised your knees pretty badly. Honestly - you look like roadkill, no offense mate,” Louis said bluntly, earning a painful snort from Harry. “Niall had to sedate you. You puked on him and then tried to swing on him, but you missed him and - your balance was practically none existent, slipped in your own vomit and - honestly I don’t even know how you survived.”

“He threw it,” Harry mumbled. “Don’ ‘member the rest… the after. With Niall. Don’ ‘member Leavin’. Was drugged.”

“You looked drugged,” Louis said quietly. “Bloody fucking rubbish, that. They nearly got you killed. Fought like a drunk fucking Neanderthal. Like you couldn’t feel anything and couldn’t hit the backside of a bloody barn.”

“Sorry,” Harry mumbled. “There was a bit - bit of a learnin’ curve, was bit slow -“

“Don’t apologize,” Louis nearly shouted and Harry flinched at the sudden noise, grimacing sharply as pain ricocheted through his head and neck and shoulders. “Sorry - sorry -“ Louis said automatically, lowering his tone, forcing it to grow more gentle. “I’m not angry with you, Haz, I’m angry with them, for what they’ve done to you. They nearly got you killed by messing about with drugs. You didn’t need any of that. They did it to mess with you. To remind you of your place. I’m not … I don’t mean to yell at you, I’m sorry. I’m just. Fucking furious. For you. On your behalf. Not at - not at you, alright? Never at you.”

Harry was quiet for a while, staring down at his hands. They weren’t covered in blood anymore. He felt like maybe they should be. He felt like maybe he’d been bathing in blood for so long that he’d never be able to get them clean again. The blood had seeped into the very tissue of his body. It was a part of him now. “Thank you,” he finally said and Louis practically squaked. 

“Don’t bloody thank me, dickhead,” Louis said sharply, and Harry glanced warily at him. Louis tore a hand raggedly through his hair. “Jesus. Don’t thank me, never thank me.” He kept spitting the word out, as if it were acid, as if he couldn’t get the taste out of his mouth. “I’m not doing this for - it’s not about - any of that. I don’t want …”

“What is it about,” Harry rumbled quietly, watching Louis. 

“Fuck if I know,” Louis side. He hunched forward. At first it was just to rest his chin in his head, but it quickly devolved into him burying his whole face in his hands. “Fair bit committed to you, ain’t I,” he mumbled, his words muffled by his hands. 

“What d’you want?” Harry pressed. His voice was thready, faint, but it felt like a demand. 

“I don’t know,” Louis snapped defensively. “I don’t know,” he repeated, much quieter. “Don’t know what I’m doing,” he muttered. 

Harry let them lapse back into silence as Louis sat there in his chair, hunched in on himself, face buried in his hands. Louis had lost his temper in front of Harry before, plenty of times. Anger seemed to be the best way for Louis to express himself. But this was different. He’d never seen Louis this … undone before. Just quiet, defeated. And it unnerved Harry a little. Because Louis was the structure holding him together. If Louis crumbled, Harry would too. 

“Lou,” Harry said after a long while. Louis jumped at the quiet rasp, jerking his head up. “It’s okay,” Harry said slowly. 

Louis’s laugh was short and quiet and full of disbelief. Harry shifted and offered out his hand, as far as the shackle would allow it. Louis rose to his feet and reluctantly took his hand. He held it as if he were holding something fragile, too aware of how marked up it looked, of how fresh the grimace on Harry’s face looked. Louis lifted his gaze from that fragile hand to look up at Harry’s face and he broke. 

His entire face crumbled. Louis knew he was crying. He could feel it being torn out of him, violent bit by violent bit. He knew it was ridiculous and ugly and embarrassing. What the fuck did he have to cry about? Harry was the one going into that arena every month, to literally fight for his life. And Louis was over here, sobbing like a pathetic child. He wanted to leave; just see himself out. But Harry’s fingers tightened on his, rooting him to the spot. 

Harry lifted his other hand and reached to pull Louis closer, over the side of the bed, down into him. Restrained like this, Harry couldn’t wrap his arms around Louis. But he kept one hand on Louis’s and curled the fingers of his other hand around the back of Louis’s neck, and held Louis against him, as Louis sobbed hard enough to shake the both of them. 

Harry murmured reassurances into Louis’s hair, telling him, “it’s okay, Lou, I’m here,” over and over again, until finally Louis’s sobs subsided and he laid still, bone heavy and drowsy. 

“They almost got you killed,” Louis mumbled into Harry’s chest. “You - I watched -“ he couldn’t finish the sentence. He couldn’t voice the thought. It was too encompassing - explaining how horrific that fight had been. How helpless he had felt. And why it was different than it had been last month. 

“I know,” Harry soothed him quietly. The voice felt heavy, the hand on the back of Louis’s neck felt heavy. Rather than dragging him down, Louis felt anchored. Grounded. “They won’t. It’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. And so will you. I promise.” 

Louis scoffed wetly. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he mumbled. 

“I plan on keeping this one,” Harry promised him quietly. He tangled his fingers in the hair at the nape of Louis’s neck, gently scratching at his scalp. Louis wanted to argue with him, but there was a soothing rhythm to Harry’s fingers and he was exhausted. Bone deep exhausted. He felt awed, by being here. By the terrifying relief of this very moment. Harry, still breathing, on the mend, beneath him. Louis had known how fleeting life could be. How quickly it could be taken. How suddenly somebody could die. But he hadn’t known how this would feel. To fully get invested in these stupid blood sports, to actually care personally about the people in the cages, and then have to sit there, every single month, knowing that one day, that person he had gotten invested in could get their head crushed in. And nobody would care. Nobody would stop it. Nobody would mourn it. Nobody but him.

And now, he was here, making that one person promise him things would be okay just to make him feel better.


	9. Fine Line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm kinda winging it here. But trigger warning because I dunno the guard system of this place is just icky, in general. Let me know what ya'll think and how you would like to see this all play out. Coming up soon, the legal battle and court proceedings will start to take more of a center stage. And thanks for all the comments and kudos, really guys, that means a lot to me.

They put a cast on Harry's hand. A thick unwieldy thing that made it feel twice it’s normal size. Harry really did look like he’d been hit by a car. Even though the swelling dissipated rather quickly, the dark purpling of his face, neck, shoulders and knees remained stark against his generally pale skin. He moved like a fragile thing, grimacing at the slightest shifting, seemingly bracing himself at the prospect of mere movement. It was a vulnerability Harry had never allowed Louis to bear witness to. Harry lived in the moments in between survival. He lived poised, braced, burying every weakness he knew himself to have so deep inside that he instinctively kept those weaknesses close even in Louis’s presence. Even when he knew he was in safe company that would never exploit those weaknesses. To see pain evident on Harry’s face every time he breathed was jarring for Louis every time he glimpsed it, because it didn’t mean what Louis wanted it to mean. It didn’t mean that Harry trusted him enough to keep his guard lowered. It meant that Harry was in so much pain, he didn’t have the energy to keep those walls up. It was a forceful lowering, and it didn’t just pertain to Louis. It worried Louis that Harry might be physically exhausted enough to keep those walls lowered even in the presence of the guards, and other men who meant to do him harm. Which was dangerous.

By the third day following the match, Louis found himself in Harry’s bed, cradling the boy’s head in his lap, gently stroking his fingers mindlessly through the boy’s curls. Harry had gotten great at laying perfectly still, but breathing still seemed to cause him pain. Whatever they had given him before the fight was still slowly working itself out of his system. He couldn’t sleep through the night, and it’d taken him two days to stop puking. His throat felt torn apart, and his appetite was nonexistent. But laying like this, Harry seemed capable of relaxing. He could let his eyes close and let his full weight rest against Louis. Because of his body’s inability to fully shut down enough to sleep deeply enough, Harry seemed perpetually exhausted. Like he was operating purely on autopilot. 

“Are you still with me, Haz,” Louis murmured, stroking Harry’s hair off of his forehead. 

Harry hummed quietly. “You were just about to tell me what happened when Snow White found the seven dwarves, even though I’ve already told you my mother read me the story before,” he rasped, his words slightly slurring together from his reluctance to fully open his mouth. 

“I tell it better,” Louis insisted for possibly the fifth time so far. 

“You can’t tell a fairy tale better than the original source, Lou,” Harry repeated, his voice faint but deep. It had a sleep heavy rasp to it. 

“That rubbish is dated,” Louis insisted. “Besides, I’m a natural born storyteller. I tell every story better just by being me, okay, mate.”

Harry smiled faintly, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Okay,” he agreed, which did make Louis smile fondly down at him. Those things were easier when Harry couldn’t see them. Louis still hadn’t decided what he was going to do about everything and Harry hadn’t really pushed for any concrete answer either. Harry hadn’t referenced that conversation they’d had in the infirmary at all - or that Louis had quite aggressively cried at him. Louis wasn’t even sure Harry remembered it. Which gave Louis plenty of time to overthink his next course of action and his emotions and what he would do if he failed Harry, because if he were to be honest with himself, he was falling for this boy. 

This boy who lived in the in between of life and death. Who teetered too close to falling over the edge of either side of that fine line. Louis didn’t know what he would do with himself if he failed to save Harry. He was falling into this too deep. 

“Lou?” Harry rasped and Louis blinked down at Harry. Because Harry was definitely staring at him now. It wasn’t accusing or demanding or judgmental. If anything, it looked a little sleepy. Not even confused, just sleepy. 

“Sorry,” Louis murmured and resumed stroking his fingers through Harry’s hair. “Anyway, back to the story. So Snow White found these seven weirdos -“

“That must’ve been nice,” Harry murmured. “She seemed awfully lonely before.” His voice sounded as sleepy as his face looked. And when Louis glanced back down, Harry had already let his eyes slip closed again. Harry always looked almost peaceful like that - when he shut his eyes, he sealed that intense concentration behind those lowered eyelids. And when you took that from him, Harry really did look his age. He looked young. Innocent. Sometimes it was easy to forget that he wasn’t. All those years of isolation and penance hid plainly in the intensity of Harry’s eyes. 

“They helped,” Louis murmured, his voice a little rough. He cleared his throat, his fingers pausing in Harry hair. “Harry, we should talk about what happened before -“ 

The door swung open and Harry jumped. Louis audibly sighed, while Harry attempted to hastily sit up. “What? What could you possibly need? It’s been like three days. He’s resting,” Louis sniped irritably. Louis was much slower at sitting himself up fully.

“Shower,” the man at the door said. “Unless you like ‘em rank. Some men are into that.” Louis wrinkled his nose at the insinuation, and glared toward the guard. The man was heavy set, with solid shoulders but a round, pungy stomach. His hair was thinning on top, but his mangy beard seemed to be thriving just fine. The guard gestured toward Harry. “Get up.”

Harry rose to his feet. Louis watched him. Harry’s movements were restrained, calculative, graceful in a weird way that Louis really only noticed in the colosseum. It occurred to Louis that Harry was only ever graceful as a survival tactic, when he believed a wrong time misstep could kill him. That was how Harry behaved with the guards in this place. That was the way he had always behaved, Louis realized. But maybe his earlier fear was unfounded. Maybe even with this level of pain, Harry wouldn’t falter in his reservation. Maybe he could maintain his walls while in the presence of the guards. Maybe he was stronger than even Louis realized.

The guard moved forward and grabbed Harry’s arm. With the unwieldy cast on his arm, they couldn’t cuff Harry before leading him out like they normally would. Their solution to that seemed to be to treat Harry like a dangerous beast who could not be trusted with free movement. Louis wasn’t quite sure why the facility seemed to view Harry as some psycho on the verge of lashing out at them - Harry had never been anything but submissive toward the guards as far as Louis could tell. The guard tugged Harry forcefully from the small cell to where two additional guards waited in the hallway. Through the open door, Louis could see that both of the guards were armed, their guns trained on Harry, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. Harry must’ve noticed it too, because he tensed and pulled back. 

Louis understood the instinct. The guards that worked here weren’t generally armed lethally. They were armed with batons and tasers. But the last thing he saw before the door slammed shut was a rifle swinging toward Harry’s face. 

Harry tasted blood, and several arms clamped down on his arms, tugging him forcefully away from his cell door. Harry tried to lift a hand to his mouth, to staunch the blood flow, but one of those many hands violently jerked his arm away from his mouth and twisted it behind his back. Harry made a noise of discomfort as the pressure pulled against so many aches, he couldn’t even accurately pinpoint exactly what it made hurt.

“You done,” a guard sneered into his ear and Harry inclined his head slightly in a nod. “Good,” the man said. “Resist detainment again and you’ll be showing up to that fancy charity match of yours with a bullet in your knee, got it?”

Again, Harry dipped his head slightly in a very restrained nod. He was breathing hard, and it sent pain across the entire expanse of his chest. Logically, Harry understood that it was unlikely they would outright shoot him. He was property of the state at this point. Permanently injuring him outside of the colosseum, outside of a revenue that earned them a profit would be vandalism against the state. It would be a loss of profit for them to do that. But the longer he served his imprisonment, the murkier the line between what they could do and what they weren’t allowed to do became. 

They stood like that for a moment longer, before Harry was shoved forward. He stumbled, but the hand remained on his wrist, holding it firmly against the small of his back. The walk to the showers was uncomfortable and stilted, and by the time they reached it, Harry’s attempt at masking his own limp had all but fallen away. Trying to maintain it was too exhausting, and that bothered Harry. The guards here were like vultures. They picked at weakness until it became impossible to heal that weakness. 

“Strip,” the guard holding Harry barked before shoving him away, further into the shower stall.

Harry faltered. “The cast isn’t supposed to get wet,” he finally said, quietly.

“The cast isn’t supposed to get wet,” the guard repeated, pitching his voice much higher than Harry’s had been in mockery. “I don’t remember asking. Did I ask about his bloody cast?” 

“Can’t say I recall you asking about his bloody cast,” a second guard reported.

“No, that’s what I thought. Chatty Cathy here wants to talk about his cast, though,” the first guard continued. “Well let’s hear about it, Cathy. Let’s hear about the bloody cast. Enlighten us.”

Harry socially withdrew. He disliked when they got like this the most. When all they wanted to do was see how much they could humiliate him. “I don’t have anything else to say about it,” Harry said quietly.

The first guard barked out an obnoxious laugh and took a step closer to Harry. “You had loads to say about it before,” he insisted. “And now you’re all clammed up when we give you the floor? What’s the matter? Performance anxiety? Why don’t we see how your arm’s looking beneath that cast.”

The man lunged for Harry’s arm and Harry acted with the instincts of the arena. He immediately jerked his arm back before the man could grab it. “It hasn’t healed,” he said quickly, already mentally kicking himself for doing exactly what they’d told him not to a mere fifteen minutes ago.

He could see that realization on the guard’s face. His face flushed an ugly red with anger real fast. “George, what was that rule we gave the whore?” He barked over to a second guard. 

“Resist detainment, get a bullet in the knee,” George readily supplied. 

“You can’t remove the cast, it hasn’t healed,” Harry tried to cut in, but he was losing his own restraint. His voice was sharper than it should be; blatantly agitated.

“Now he’s telling me what I can and cannot do,” the first guard barked, but there was a dangerous edge to his tone. 

“First he resists detainment, and now he’s ordering you about, doesn’t seem right,” George readily agreed, and Harry found himself biting back the urge to punch George in the face. 

“I’ll strip,” Harry said stiffly, but he hadn’t ever been good at deescalating situations with the guards. That was why he’d adopted the quiet, subdued disposition in the first place. 

George snorted, and the first guard hit Harry across the face so hard, he had to blink black spots out of his vision. “Go ahead then, whore,” he spat out, and Harry almost missed the entire sentence.

Slowly, Harry stepped back and then reached for the hem of his shorts, to shove them down. This part wasn’t unusual - all showers he was afforded began with a complete lack of privacy, and him stripping in front of the guards. But this time, George laughed and reached out a hand to stop him.

“How bout you dance for us, make it interesting, yeah?” George asked. He twirled his finger in demonstration. “You know how to put on a show. So put one on for us.”

Harry swallowed hard, shifting his gaze from George to the first guard, and then over to a third, much more silent guard. They were all watching him. Waiting. If he refused to play along, they would make him.

So awkwardly, Harry tried to move his hips a little, in likely the most pathetic showing of dance ability they’d ever seen. Because he wasn’t a dancer. George openly laughed at him for the attempt. “Drop your shorts,” the first guard ordered, and Harry readily shoved his shorts down, happy to be over with this stupid attempt at humiliation.

But then George stopped him again as Harry was stepping out of his shorts. “Ah, you’re not done yet, though are you. Keep it up. The dancing. Make it interesting for us. Come on.”

Harry swallowed hard again, and attempted to … he didn’t even know what this was meant to be. A strip tease? It couldn’t possibly be erotic - his hips moved awkwardly. The removal of his briefs were even more awkward. He nearly tripped himself up attempting to remove them while still “dancing” and George caught him, steadying him, while chuckling openly. And then George’s hands lingered her on his hips. 

“Now. I think you should apologize to my friend Martin, over there, for presuming to tell him how to do his job, yeah?” George told Harry, quieter, in a mockery of intimacy. It was almost gentle, as if George were merely giving Harry advice. 

Harry’s eyes darted toward Martin, who glared back at him, with amused expectancy.

“I-” Harry swallowed hard and licked his lips. “I apologize for speaking out of turn,” he said quietly, and jumped when he felt George’s hands tighten on his hips.

“That didn’t sound very genuine, slut,” George chidded, but his tone still sounded gentle, as if he were merely attempting to help Harry out here.

“I’m sorry,” Harry tried again, his eyes pinned on Martin’s chest. “For having the audacity to speak out of turn and tell you how to do your job. It wasn’t my place.”

“And what is your place?” George prompted, his thumb rubbing circles into Harry’s bare hip.

Harry didn’t like the question. The answer wasn’t obvious. Anything he said could just make this worse. “To shut up and do as I’m told,” he said, because that seemed to be the most obvious point here. 

George smiled brightly at Harry, as if Harry had just passed a particularly hard test. Then he slapped Harry’s ass, hard. “Good boy. Now, you may shower. But since you’re being such a good boy, we’ll make sure that fancy cast of yours doesn’t get wet. We know how concerned you are of it.”

George wrapped an arm around Harry’s shoulder, and led him away from the shower stalls. Harry’s feet felt like concrete as he reluctantly allowed himself to be led away to a dressing area beside the shower stalls. He’d never needed this area before, and given that he was naked, he definitely didn’t need it now. George stopped Harry in front of a bench, and told him to kneel.

Harry shook his head and opened his mouth - to apologize again maybe, or to suggest that he didn’t care about the cast anymore, he was just trying to do right by the doctor, but George’s arm shifted from around his shoulders, and his fingers snaked into Harry’s hair and tightened in it. Like an anchor, he used his hold in Harry’s hair to shove Harry down, until he was forced to drop to his knees. George slammed Harry’s face down onto the wooden bench and then held it there. He seemed more amused by how rapidly Harry had given up on his self restraint. He laughed openly as Harry tried to thrash away from the harsh hold. And then Martin grabbed Harry’s arm and pulled it up, stretching it out over the bench and for a terrifying moment, Harry feared that they might mean to break his arm. Instead, Martin sawed hazardously at the cast with a knife. It seemed to take over. It was done entirely in a silence that was only interrupted by Martin’s slow, aggressive sawing and Harry’s pained panting.

Finally, Martin pulled the mangled cast free, revealing Harry’s arm, which throbbed angrily at the treatment. The bone was just a fractured, but he had a perfect bracelet of bruising around his wrist.

“Look at that, good as new,” George purred, into Harry’s ear, as the boy knelt pinned down. George’s hand was still tangled up in his hair, but the man had practically draped his whole body over Harry’s back, keeping his chest pinned down against the bench as firmly as his head was. He could feel George’s crushing weight every time he exhaled a strained breath. 

“You’re lucky we don’t make you use your gimp hand to jerk us off with,” George said, before finally letting Harry up. The shower was done in relative silence, but everytime Harry tried to wash himself without using his newly freed hand, George was the first to laugh at him.

Once he was redressed, Martin insisted on cuffing Harry’s hands behind his back. Harry didn’t even attempt to mask his limp on the way back, and George didn’t attempt to mask how much he was enjoying the entire trip. He kept close to Harry, while the third guard kept a distance, with a gun unnecessarily trained on Harry’s back. George kept an arm loosely wound around Harry’s shoulders, keeping the boy pressed to his side, so that every step was awkward. Harry kept his eyes trained on the ground the entire time. Even when George began to openly stroke his fingers down the side of Harry’s face, along the curve of his jaw. 

“Until next time, princess,” was George’s parting, as they shoved Harry back into his cell after uncuffing him. Harry stood in the middle of his room, physically shaking, staring down at Louis. He had expected to deal with Louis’s loud concern - which was nice sometimes. Sometimes it was nice to see somebody else feel the full force of emotions on Harry’s behalf; he wasn’t quite used to that. Sometimes it was distracting and overwhelming.

Instead, Louis laid curled up on Harry’s bed, asleep. And Louis looked decades younger when he was fully asleep. Harry hadn’t ever seen it. Louis never fell asleep here, even the few times Harry had slept - Louis had always been awake when he fell asleep, and when he woke up. Harry had always seen it as some type of discomfort on Louis’s part. The bed was uncomfortable by default. The entire prison system was uncomfortable. It had taken Harry weeks to be able to fully allow himself to fall asleep here when he’d first got here. But now, seeing Louis sleeping in Harry’s absence, Harry considered that maybe it hadn’t been a discomfort. Maybe Louis hadn’t allowed both of them to sleep at the same time. Like maybe Louis meant to watch over him. Give Harry something he’d never had before - somebody to watch his back.

Harry moved deeper into the room, and then leaned back against the wall beside the bed, and slid down it until he was seated comfortably beside the bed. Perhaps he could give Louis this back. Perhaps he could let pull the thin blanket up from where it had been bunched at the foot of the bed and cover Louis with it and just let him sleep for a little bit.


	10. Grounded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I sincerely apologize for going way too long without updating. I have no actual excuse for that, but I am halfway through writing the next chapter, so I can promise that the wait for another chapter will not be anywhere near as lengthy. 
> 
> For everybody still reading this, you have my deepest gratitude, and place leave a comment to let me know what you think.

_“Haz? Haz, are you awake, love?” Perrie’s gentle tone drifted across the spacious room. “Haz.” Perrie’s nimble fingers stroked through his unruly, sleep tangled hair, meticulously and gently untangling every knot._

_Harry stirred, turning over and forcing his eyes open. Perrie was much closer than he’d anticipated. She sat perched on the side of his bed, positively beaming down at him. He couldn’t help it. Her childlike enthusiasm - a feat so rare in the manor - brought a sleepy smile to his face._

_“Splendid, you’re awake,” she chirped, untangling an errant knot before leaving his hair alone. “Get dressed. I fancy a midnight adventure. Don’t you, love?”_

_“Your last midnight adventure was dragging me down to the kitchens to put on a pot of tea for you,” Harry reminded her, his voice amused but sleep deep and slow. “I’m beginning to suspect you relocated me to your quarters just for the convenience of the tea.”_

_It had taken him a few years to understand the concept of teasing. At first when Perrie began to tease him, Harry would get tense all over and stumble his way through heartbreakingly genuine apologies. He never denied anything, and expected to be punished for whatever misstep he made. But instead of finding enjoyment in his reaction, Perrie had continued to tease him. Eventually, Harry learned how to tease her back. The first attempt was awkward and terrifying. But Perrie had been so enthusiastically pleased, Harry continued to tease her. Back then, she had been taller than him, and he had been all limbs and hair. Now he had a few inches on her, and had begun to fill out in other aspects, but Perrie treated him the same as she had the first day she’d seen him. Much like a pet she wished to adopt. Harry understood that it was probably wrong, but he found himself endeared to her regardless, because nobody had ever treated him like anything they’d rather keep before._

_“I feared you’d eventually catch onto me, Haz,” Perrie told him with fake solemn. Her tone was extremely convincing, but her smile was blinding. “C’mon, put on your trousers. I’ll let you sleep in tomorrow, promise.” Harry remained incapable of saying no, even when Perrie made it very obvious that he could - if he wanted to - with her. He could roll back over and go back to sleep - if he wanted to. But physically… he could not. He suspected that she wouldn’t find it in herself to hold it against him, but in the dark corners of his mind, he feared that she might. That her behavior toward him depended solely on how compliant he was to her. Because if it didn’t hinge on that, then what did it hinge on?_

_So he climbed out for bed and redressed himself. He shook a hand through his hair, shaking free his curls before shoving them back out of his face. And then they began their midnight adventure._

_Straight to the empty kitchens, where Perrie kindly asked him to put on a kettle for them. Harry sighed, and bit back a smile at the sheer predictability of it and Perrie ruffled his hair and thanked him kindly and hopped up onto a counter._

_Harry poured her a cup and fashioned it up just the way she liked it - one cube of sugar, two splashes of milk - and brought it to her. Perrie took a sip and sighed contentedly._

_“Haz, if this marriage doesn’t work out, and Nick sends me away, I want to keep you,” Perrie said and Harry cocked an eyebrow. He thought she was teasing him - like his ability to remember how she fancied her tea and his willingness to make her a cuppa at any time of the day was enough to keep him forever._

_He opened his mouth to say as much, but Perrie continued. “Not keep,” she amended. “I want to take you home, and free you. Employ you. But like, for real - employ. Not as a personal servant, as a whatever you fancy yourself being. I know you fancy cooking. They don’t see people here. Everybody is disposable and replaceable. But I see you. I’d never be able to replace you. So if I leave here in shame, it wouldn’t feel much like a loss if you could come with me.”_

_Harry’s mouth was still open to speak but suddenly his words evaporated because he’d never been faced with that prospect before. Of being seen. Of being valued. He was technically free. He wasn’t enslaved. He could technically leave. But his lack of education and his low birth class kept him chained here by intangible shackles. Perrie wished to unshackle him._

_“Forgive me for speaking out of turn, Miss,” Harry began, slowly, in a careful deep drawl. “But you will never leave here in shame. If they send you away, they bear the shame of that alone.” He spoke as he stared down at the cup of tea in her delicate hands._

_Perrie gently touched Harry’s shoulder and Harry’s eyes got stuck on her wrist. There was something red there, on the inside of it. He frowned and hesitantly brought his hand to the spot. But the spot got bigger and when he withdrew his hand, it was covered in it. Blood. There was so much blood, but it felt like he was watching it through stop motion. He couldn’t see the blood moving, gathering, growing. It just suddenly got more and more, right before his eyes. “Miss Perrie,” he whispered, confused, taking her wrist in his hand, the skin slick and cold to the touch. He rubbed his thumb through it, in an attempt to rub the blood away, to see the source of it. To stop the bleeding. But the blood seeped through his fingers, and congealed on his own skin until his hands were stained red._

_“I want to keep you forever,” Perrie said decisively, her cheerful voice suddenly haunting and misplaced, failing to grasp the natural concern of life. She lifted the tea to her mouth and took a happy sip from it. Her final word echoing on a loop, even as she drank. Forever. Forever. Forever._

_He could feel the blood soak through his thin night pants at his ankles. He could see it smeared across the counter-top in streaks. He could taste it in his mouth. He couldn’t breathe without choking on the blood. He released her wrist and lifted his bloody hand to his own neck, stumbling back. But the floor was slick with it now and he fell, as she happily swung her legs against the counter. The blood splashed up around him as he fell, submerging him until he couldn’t see anything, and for the life of him - the very short, very fragile life of him - he couldn’t find the surface again. He couldn’t escape the blood that had been shed._

Harry jerked awake, gasping and choking. “Haz.” Harry startled away from the hand grasping his arm. “Haz, hey, wake up, mate, you’re bloody dreaming, yeah?”

Disoriented, Harry could still hear Perrie in his ear, asking him if he was awake. Stroking her fingers through his hair. It meshed atrociously with Louis’s sharp, more aggressive accent, demanding he wake up. Perrie’s gentle fingers clashed with Louis’s sharp fingers digging into Harry’s arm.

He couldn’t breath. 

Harry shoved Louis away while simultaneously attempting to stand up, gasping for air, the taste of blood squeezing his throat like a physical force. When Harry finally opened his eyes, the room swung dangerously in front him. He brought a hand to his throat as he stumbled to his feet, wheezing. 

“Are you - I think you’re - you’re having a panic attack,” Louis said, hastily rising with him. Louis sounded far away, but Harry could feel Louis’s fingers digging into his arm. Harry pressed a shaking hand to his chest, as if he could reach into his chest and slow his heart by sheer force. It didn’t work. 

“Hey, hey,” Louis said softly. “Focus on me, yeah? On me voice? On me breathing. I need you to tell me five things you can see, right. Five things. Say it out loud. However slow you need to. Five things. Come on.”

Harry frowned, his own wheezing loud to his own ears. He just needed his inhaler. He just needed that artificial air. He tried to move past Louis to get to the bed, to get under the mattress for it but Louis’s grip tightened on Harry’s arm, rooting him in place. “Five things,” Louis pressed. “Come on, please.”

“You,” Harry forced out, his jaw stiff and unmoving, His voice weak and choked. 

“That’s it, come on, another,” Louis coaxed. 

“The ground. The - wall,” Harry forced out.

“Two more Haz, you’re almost there,” Louis pressed gently. 

“Toilet. Bed.” 

Louis moved his hands from Harry’s arms to cup his face. “Four things you can smell,” he pressed. 

Harry made a choked noise of impatience and forced himself to inhale. It went down like glass. “Your aftershave,” he said, his voice rough and strained. He probably looked and sounded pathetic but Louis had his eyes pinned on him, smiling encouragingly. Harry forced himself to keep going. He had to inhale again, and focus this time because the only thing he could smell now was Louis’s aftershave. “Um, shamp- m’shampoo. Sw- sweat. Stale… stale air.” Harry exhaled sharply, panting out the effort of focused speech. 

Louis rubbed his thumb over Harry’s jaw in a soothing motion, practically vibrating with encouragement. “That’s good, brilliant. Three things you can touch. What can you feel, Haz.” Louis’s voice didn’t sound harsh anymore. It sounded soft. 

“Your - your fingers,” Harry said, his own voice softening. His breathing still sounded labored, but it didn’t feel as restricted. It didn’t feel like he was trying to breathe through a straw. He shifted his fingers, and realized that he was gripping the shirt at Louis’s hips tightly, like a lifeline. “Clothes,” he mumbled. “Sweat.”

“Good,” Louis murmured. “So good.” He shifted his hands, stroking his nimble fingers back through Harry’s unruly hair and Harry practically melted beneath the firm, steady stroking. He fell forward, into Louis’s waiting arms and let himself exhale a trapped, shuddering breath, finally breathing freely. 

Louis continued to stroke his hair, massaging his scalp beneath the tangled hair. “That’s it,” he murmured. “Feels better, doesn’t it? It’s okay.” Harry buried his face in the crook of Louis’s neck, and let the trembles of adrenaline wrack through his body. He had to bend down, to reach Louis’s neck, and he never wanted to move. “It’s okay, let it out. Breathe through it,” Louis continued, stroking his fingers down Harry’s trembling back. “Two things you can hear, Haz,” he murmured. 

“Your voice,” Harry murmured into Louis’s neck. “My heart.”

“One thing you can taste,” Louis continued. Harry could breathe again. Louis could feel his slowed breathing against his neck. But he wanted to see this through. 

“Blood,” Harry said thickly. 

Louis frowned. He wanted to pull Harry back, to ask him to repeat himself but Harry felt so heavy against him. At this point, Louis was practically holding the both of them up. “Blood,” he repeated. 

“It’s all I taste. Think I bit my tongue in m’sleep,” Harry rationalized, but his stomach still turned uncomfortably at the pulsing reminder of drowning in Perrie’s blood. 

Later, when Louis had finally coaxed Harry over to his cot and had them sat down, Louis’s back against the cold wall and Harry draped over Louis like a heavy, comfortable blanket, Louis’s fingers still stroking through Harry’s now mostly detangled hair, Louis asked him if he’d like to talk about it. The panic attack. The dream. 

“No,” Harry said. He said the word as if it was in a language foreign to him. He said it carefully, as if he was uncertain of the proper way to pronounce it, or if the word even fit the current conversation. If it even made sense here. 

Louis could feel Harry tense. So he was equally careful. His fingers didn’t falter. His voice, when he spoke, didn't harden. “Okay,” he said, casually. He waited until he could feel Harry release some of the tension in his body. 

“Wanna talk about what happened to your cast?” Louis asked after a moment of comfortable silence. 

“They took it off,” Harry said quietly. 

“Not Horan?” Louis asked for clarification. 

“He told me not to get it wet,” Harry mumbled. “I didn’t get it wet.”

Louis frowned. “You told them not to get it wet, so they removed the cast,” he repeated and Harry made an impatient noise of confirmation. Louis could feel the hot huff of air against his neck. It made him feel hot all over. “With a knife.” Harry made another noise of confirmation. Harry got like that sometimes. Where he would just run out of energy to talk, or words to say. Louis had found it endlessly frustrating in the beginning, back before he could speak the same language as Harry. Back before he could read those lost words on Harry’s face. Back then, it had felt abrupt. Harry would run out of words in the middle of conversations, in the middle of explanations. Sometimes he wouldn’t have any words left by the time Louis came around for visitation, and they’d just sit in an awkward, unfamiliar silence of Louis asking questions and Harry giving noncommittal grunts. But now Louis could decipher the grunts, and could see Harry lose his energy for speech coming, as if he could visibly see the words leaving Harry. Now, it felt less annoying.

“Does it hurt?” He asked. “You were holding me pretty hard, did it -“

“I couldn’t feel it,” Harry interrupted, his words slow, stretched out. He could feel it now. A gnawing throbbing that spanned from his fingertips to his elbow. “Did it hurt you?”

Louis shook his head. “Never,” he murmured. “You’ve never hurt me. Still haven’t.”

Harry felt settled by that. He relaxed against Louis, curling into him, almost burrowing and Louis wrapped his arms around Harry, to hold him closer. 

“I’ll talk to Horan about a waterproof brace, to ensure your wrist heals in the right direction,” Louis murmured after a while. “This is bloody madness. Absolute fucking anarchy, this cluster fuck.”

Harry grunted in something close to disinterested agreement. Louis took the hint and let them lapse back into silence. 

They didn’t talk much after that, but Louis stayed where he was until his left ass cheek felt numb from the position and a guard came in to kick him out. When he returned the next day, Harry looked to be in a better state. He didn’t have that lost, desperate look on his face. What had happened between them in the dead of the night was stuck there, like a photo that Harry seemed intent on pretending hadn’t happened and didn’t exist. 

Harry wasn’t fitted with a new cast until mere days before his next fight, this one a much more stripped down version than the last, but a great deal less unwieldy. 

The existential dread Harry had succumbed to preceding his last fight was much lighter in the coming days of the next fight. It was a charity match, and therefore nonlethal by design. Louis worried that the capitalistic angle of these fights could do more than just ensure Harry’s survival, even during the lethal fights. He worried that they would ensnare Harry so deeply that extracting Harry from cogs of this machine would become even harder than it already was. 

It was one thing to free a man viewed as a prisoner - prisoners were a waste of resources. To paint Harry as some wronged innocent could be almost easy, if Harry remained a waste of resources. The more money Harry pulled in, the less wasteful those resources became. Eventually, losing Harry - to death or freedom - could become the equivalent of losing millions of pounds. This could become too big for them. Too big for him. 

And once Louis began to entertain that fear, he found a worse fear to entertain - what if this was by design? What if the king himself had foreseen this, and planned for it? What if that was why they were given three months. It had seemed like such a time crunch, when Louis had heard it. Trials could take years - years of meticulous planning. But now … now three months felt like way too long. It was too much time. Too much time for the blood thirsty audience to throw their money at the king just to watch Harry survive. 

What if that was why a jury had been denied to them? Naturally, watching Harry fight for his life would empathize people to him in a way that nothing else could. A jury would root for an underdog, and Harry fighting tooth and nail just to survive made a very pretty picture of that underdog. 

If this was the actual ploy of the king, it ate away at Louis, because it meant that the king was playing them before Louis even agreed to participate in the game and he felt himself overcome with a rush of insecurity. What if he wasn’t smart enough to win at this type of game? What if every move he made was already predicted and prepared for by the king?

Harry poked Louis’s cheek and Louis startled, taking a deep, loud breath. “You’re pensive today,” Harry observed. 

“They’ve begun running adverts in the daily mail for your celebrity matches,” Louis murmured. 

Harry frowned. “What does that mean?” He asked. 

“This week, your opponent is Lady Gemma. She’s a duchess to be, betrothed to Michal Mlynowski, Duke of Florence. Can’t imagine how they pulled that one off. Florence outlawed gladiatorial entertainment centuries ago,” Louis rattled off. “They decided it’s barbaric. For a duchess to participate in the event itself …”

But then Louis paused and sighed. “But I suspect that’s the point of them having released the advent - for me to tell you it.”

Harry had gone stock still at the very start of the conversation. He had a look on his face that Louis couldn’t readily decipher. “I can’t,” Harry said finally, quickly shaking his head. There was an edge of desperation to the speed of his shaking, as if he couldn’t quite fit that emotion into the words. “I don’t want to do this fight, I can’t do it.”

Harry, suddenly full of that same desperate edge, rose hastily to his feet. “I can’t do it,” he repeated emphatically. 

“She means something to you,” Louis began. 

“She means _everything_ to me,” Harry cut in harshly. “She’s not a _duchess._ ” He spat out the word with such venomous contempt that Louis couldn’t even recognize his voice. “She’s a servant. Just like me. That’s the lot we were born into. And those people don’t mix with our people. There’s no money in it. No prestige. Nothing to bloody gain. _They_ did this. Just so they could force her down there with me, where they think she ought to belong but she doesn’t belong there. In that pit of hell. She wasn’t ever supposed to _be_ there.” Harry was speaking so uncharacteristically fast and with such malicious venom, that Louis couldn’t help but be bewildered. 

Harry was shaking all over, as if his loss over his emotions were so great that the loss became tangible, physical, his entire being. “I can’t participate in that - I can’t let them make me do that to her. She doesn’t deserve it - she doesn’t -”

Louis rose to his feet, to approach Harry, to calm him - but Harry flinched away from his approach so violently that Louis froze. “Sorry, sorry,” Harry said quickly, but his entire body was drawn away from Louis. “Just - don’t touch me right now -”

“I won’t,” Louis said just as quickly. “I won’t ever touch you unless you want me to,” he promised. “Just - help me understand what’s happening here. This girl, she means something to you - she worked for the King, as a servant, in the same house, at the same time you did?”

Harry nodded jerkily. His hands were still shaking, as he turned away from Louis. “I’ve known her my whole life. I haven’t seen her since -” He stopped himself and shook his head hard. He had assumed it was because Gemma was still there, in that palace. But he hadn’t known … he was never told what had happened to his family following his sentence of treason. He didn’t know what happened to his mother. He had taught himself to stop thinking about it. They could’ve been put to death and he would have never heard about it, because nobody told him anything in here. He was stuck in a time capsule.

But he had never imagined that Gemma would be married off to some type of royalty - the sister of a boy indicted on treason. How could they have even justified that? Had they even needed to? Harry had no birth certificate. And neither did Gemma. Such a massive disconnect had been driven into their family inside of that castle. He and Gemma had only remained close from sheer willpower alone. A need that their mother either had not felt, or had not been allowed to feel.

“You said you had a sister…” Louis’s soft voice cut through Harry’s thoughts and Harry took a step further away from him, shaking his head. “Her name is Gemma, isn’t it?” Louis pressed.

“I had thought they had been killed, for years,” Harry whispered. “I was scapegoated. They couldn’t kill me. But my family … were nobodies. Nobody would’ve missed them. I thought I had killed them. Until the last fight. They told me that if I died, they would die too. Me dying now would cost them money. They needed to give me something to live for.”

Louis frowned. “You’re not meant to win the next match, Harry,” he said gently. “You don’t have to touch her. You don’t have to hurt her. You’re supposed to lose.”

Harry shook his head. “She won’t be willing, like the others. She couldn’t have signed up for this - she wouldn’t have.” He shook his head again, but his soft, almost pleading tone made it sound a lot like he was trying very hard to convince himself of this.

“This is what the king wanted,” Louis said. “I’m sure he twisted her arm just as hard as he’s twisted yours. I’m sure there’s a reason for this. But if you back out, and refuse this fight - you’ll be doing what he wants you to. And he’ll find a way to punish you for it.”

“It keeps getting worse,” Harry whispered, and then he went down to his knees and pulled his knees up to his chest and curled in on himself so tightly that Louis felt such a throbbing hollow pain in his chest at the sight of it. Harry pulled his arms up over his head and buried his face in his knees, rocking himself, as if he could comfort himself.

Louis stayed there for a while, lingering just out of touch, itching to draw closer. He tried to coax Harry to let him in, to let him help, but Harry had resolutely withdrawn to a place deep within himself that Louis couldn’t reach. Eventually, Louis had to concede and leave him be. He took that guilt out of the prison ward of the arena with him, and let it weigh upon him heavily.

When he returned the next day, resolute in helping ease Harry’s turmoil, he was turned away. He was told that Harry wasn’t receiving visitors for the day. And when he turned up the following day, he was dismissed the same way. That was when his guilt turned into a very live thing, gnawing viciously through his insides, robbing him of his appetite, of his ability to sleep at night. Because he didn’t know if this was Harry denying him, or if this was bigger than Harry, as all things tended to be. He began to fear that this was what the King had planned when they'd begun running advents in the daily mail. That he was meant to reveal to Harry that Gemma was his competition, that Harry was meant to panic, and that Louis was meant to be barred from easing that panic before the fight. Louis feared that he had done everything according to the very plan he was attempting to negate.


	11. Unaccommodating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know I don't often respond to the comments left but they really do mean so much to me, each and every one of them. More about Gemma's side of things will be revealed next chapter, and I apologize for the lack of Louis this chapter. I also apologize the wait for this chapter, again, but I sincerely hope everyone had a great Valentines day, despite the pandemic still going on.

Harry wasn’t an idiot. He’d been caught off guard the last fight, when he’d been isolated the full day leading up to the fight, because it had never happened before. The fights were less structured. He’d always been allowed visitors right up until the event itself. He’d just never had any before Louis. 

This time it was obvious what they were doing. Harry was barred from receiving visitors a full four days leading up to the charity match. Harry didn’t sleep. He didn’t need Louis to tell him what this was. It was psychological warfare. But knowing that didn’t make it any less effective. Harry didn’t sleep. But he also didn’t have any distraction from himself. The guards didn’t visit him. They didn’t take him out for a shower. The meals they brought him were slid through the slot in the door. Abruptly, they deprived him of any human contact. And it viciously ate at him. He couldn’t keep track of the time. He couldn’t remember how many days it had been or how many days he had left to go. It felt endless and eternal, inside of these four walls. He had always felt isolated before but as these four days stretched on, Harry was hit with the stark realization that he had never been this utterly alone before. 

He felt amped up and on edge and exhausted. When the door finally opened, Harry shot to his feet, shocking himself with how … eager he felt - just to see someone, even if that someone wasn’t Louis. 

It was George. And George looked delighted. Unlike the show they put on last time, George wasn’t surrounded by armed men. This time, he came alone, and without a gun. Perhaps the show they had done last time hadn't ever been for Harry. Perhaps that was their way of waging psychological warfare on Louis; to force him to acknowledge how pedestrian and useless he was, despite his own privilege. Harry didn't like that thought much, but there had been a lot of thoughts he hadn't liked much over the last few days. It seemed to be all he was capable of lately. Which was probably the point of this. “Hands on the wall, you know the drill, Princess. Legs apart. Nice and pretty.” 

George twirled his finger in the air and Harry complied, turning around and putting his hands on the far wall. George approached Harry, his steps heavy but leisurely. He patted Harry down roughly and Harry let him. And then his hands lingered on Harry’s hips. 

Harry tense and shifted, to remove his hands from the wall, to shift away from George. George’s fingers tightened on Harry’s hips and he leaned in close to speak directly into Harry’s ear. “Keep your hands on the wall.” While his voice was gentle, the underlying threat in them was spoken loud and clear through the fingers he had on Harry’s hips. 

Harry stilled and George chuckled at the sheer obedience. “Now, I’m going to tell you how this is going to go. I will take you down to give you a shower and you will behave like the good boy we both know you strive to be.” George’s thumb shifted over Harry’s hip, stroking over the skin there. 

“Then you are going to go out there and give us all what we expect of you. A show worth every red cent those people have paid to see.” 

Harry shook his head emphatically. “They know -“

“They don’t know,” George cut him off harshly. “Your fans. They don’t know who the duchess is outside of who they’re meant to think she is. Nobody has a bloody clue that she was a servant. Much less that she was born from the same whore who bore you. They’re not coming to watch her. Or anybody else we shove onto that stage with you. They’re coming for you now, Princess. You’re their pin up whore now. So you’re going to go out there and perform for them, like a good boy,” he whispered into Harry’s ear. 

George’s hands shifted from Harry’s hips, his long fingers stroking up Harry’s ribs, almost idle in their exploration. Harry remained as taut as a string as George strummed his fingers along Harry’s ribs, smoothing over the raised scar tissue there.

“Do you understand,” George finally purred into Harry’s ear. Faintly, Harry nodded. “Good boy.”

And then, almost as if a switch had been flipped, George spun Harry around and pinned him to the wall, his fingers wrapped around Harry’s throat. Harry panicked and lifted his hands to pry George’s fingers from his neck. “On the wall,” George barked, the baritone of his voice vibrating in the small room. 

Obediently, Harry aborted his resistance, pressing his hands back down, against the wall that was now at his back. He had to lock his jaw and squeeze his eyes shut when George slowly began to tighten his fingers. The man looked amused. He looked like this was fun for him. 

“If you fail me, I will take you back to this room and beat you until you can’t fucking move, and I’ll have the goddamn time of my life doing it. Do I make myself clear?” Harry tried to nod, but George’s fist around his throat practically locked his head into place. “I can’t hear you,” George said softly, as his fingers continued to grow tighter and tighter. 

“Yes,” Harry forced out, his voice stiff and faint. 

“Louder,” George said. 

“I understand,” Harry bit out, louder. 

George smiled and released Harry. Finally, he stepped back, out of Harry’s personal space, but Harry didn’t dare move off of the wall. George laughed delightedly, and reached for Harry. The boy flinched but George was undeterred. He grabbed Harry’s arm and pulled the boy toward the door. 

There were no guards waiting in the hall, or in the showers. “How’s that cast, Princess? Does it need to be removed before we do this?” There was a drawl of malicious amusement to George’s tone.

Harry shook his head. “Nah, I think that’s a bit of cop out, don’t you?” George began, conversationally. “This mute act of yours. I get that they beat that into your head, during your initial lock up, but we ain’t the royal guard down here. We ain’t the king’s men. We know what game you’re playing at. Stay quiet, stay out of trouble. It’s all just rather a bit lazy, don’t you think?” Harry frowned and slowly shook his head, because no, he didn’t. Staying silent hadn’t ever been lazy, in his opinion. It took willpower to not respond. It took effort.

George slapped Harry hard across the face, reading his continued silence as insolence. “What the fuck did I just say? Drop the act. Let’s try this again. How’s that cast, Princess? Do I need to remove it?”

“It’s waterproof,” Harry said quietly, his cheek throbbing angrily.. 

“Though, I do suppose I see where the king’s men get their ideas from. Because just talking to the guards plainly - that does feel a bit respectful. I’m above you, yeah? You’re a low life. Trash. There should be some distance between us. Doesn’t seem right that you can just speak plainly with me as you would with any other… whore. Perhaps you can think of a way to make it all sound more respectful. I’m sure you have some ideas. Let’s hear them.” George was really good at making this all sound spontaneous, very casual.

It brought a deep frown to Harry’s face. He didn’t much like the way George was forcing him to participate in his own degradation. “It’s waterproof, sir,” Harry said, his tone somehow stiffer than it had started.

George laughed delightedly. “Beautiful. Look at that. Such a good pupil.” He patted Harry on the cheek he had just slapped, much rougher than necessary. “Yeah, I like the sound of that. Now how about you strip for me.”

Harry lowered his hands to push off his shorts, but George stopped him, and Harry couldn’t stop the noise of annoyance that escaped him at the interruption. This was taking too long, and he didn’t like all of the deviation from the usual routine.

“No more muteness, Princess, yeah?” George reminded him, almost gently, as if Harry was just being particularly slow about it. “So if I give you an order, what do you say?”

“Yes, sir,” Harry muttered.

George tsked, and patted Harry’s cheek roughly. “Couldn’t quite hear that. You’re a mumbler. What do you say - more clearly.”

“Yes sir,” Harry forced out, louder. 

“Beautiful,” George chirped. “So let’s try this again. How about you strip for me?”

“Yes, sir,” Harry parroted back, and then paused, until George released Harry’s wrist and took a step back, waving his hand impatiently. Finally, Harry shoved his shorts off and stepped out of them, moving toward the showers. 

Harry felt tense as he turned on the shower. How showering generally worked seemed entirely dependent on which guard took him down here. Some of them were rougher, and cared less about cleanliness. They would turn a water hose on him until he was waterlogged and bruised. George usually allowed him to shower on his own. George always stayed and watched, of course. Harry was surveilled any time he left his room. He suspected that the cell he lived in had some type of camera, but he hadn’t ever been able to find one. He wasn’t sure if he just invented it in his head, but it kept him paranoid and on edge pretty much all the time, regardless. If there was a camera, he couldn’t allow himself to let his guard down, even when he was alone. He couldn’t cry, or freak out, or show any sign of weakness, in case they were watching and wanted to use that against him.

Louis had been making that decision difficult, especially recently. Louis seemed to think softness wasn’t weakness, but it was. It was reviving parts of himself that he had killed off years ago on the basis of survival alone, and he wasn’t sure he could risk letting those parts of himself fester. He wasn’t sure he was strong enough to kill them a second time.

Harry faltered under the spray of the shower. Rather than the borderline freezing water he was usually subjected to, this water was pleasantly warm. Harry hadn’t had a warm shower since the day Pierre had been raped. He frowned in confusion, glancing over at George. George kept his distance, watching the furrowing of Harry’s brow in amusement. But everything worked on a clock here. Everything was timed, and even while Harry didn’t have a means of counting down the seconds, he knew that they were running out the longer he stayed suspended like this, paused in his own confusion.

So he stepped back into the soothing warm spray of the water, feeling it work its way into his tense muscles. Harry washed himself, and then washed his hair, trying hard not to linger just to bask in the comforting warmth of the water. The water itself seemed to sink into his bones, and knead his muscles. And then the temperature changed. Rather than the abrupt cold Harry had been anticipating the entire shower, the temperature of the water rapidly increased, until it was scalding.

Harry recoiled, hissing air out through his teeth as he reeled back. But George was suddenly there, hand clamped on the back of his neck, forcing him back under the spray of the water. Harry pressed his hands against the water, pushing back hard to escape the burning touch of the water raining down on his chest, but George had become an immovable force.

The skin of Harry’s chest quickly reddened as it endured the brunt of the abuse. “I figured you deserved a bit of a treat,” George mused, his tone painfully calm, in Harry’s ear. “You’ve been such a good boy lately. Behaving and keeping to yourself. I figured you deserved a nice warm shower. Don’t you agree?”

Harry sank his teeth into his bottom lip, his arms straining with the sheer force he was using to push against the wall in front of him, but it wasn’t working. The spray of the water was quickly becoming unbearable. It was a pain Harry wasn’t normally exposed to. He didn’t know how to shut it off and move on.

George shook him roughly. “Don’t go quiet on me. Answer me.”

“No - no - I don’t need - I think I’m -” Just as Harry couldn’t shut the burning pain out, he couldn’t seem to formulate a complete sentence - an appropriate response to George. He couldn’t maintain the façade he had with these guards. “Thank - thank you,” he exhaled tightly. “But I think I’m done,” he forced out, breathing hard as he continued to squirm back against George.

George smiled, pressing that smirk into the side of Harry’s wet cheek. “Don’t be modest,” he practically purred. “Enjoy it. Take your time.”

“Please -” Harry started, dropping the act completely. “Please, let me be done.” The skin of his chest had turned a stark red, shiny in the abuse it was suffering. He couldn’t tell if the water was getting hotter, or if it just felt boiling hot because the skin it continued to hit was acutely sensitive to it. He bit down into his lip again, but he couldn’t hold it in. “Please,” he practically shouted, attempting to twist into George.

George remained calm, sinking his fingers into Harry’s soaked hair, and anchoring his fingers. “Put your hands down, pet,” he said calmly. And then he jerked Harry’s head back so hard, Harry thought his neck might break. “Put them down!” George shouted into his face.

Harry couldn’t help it. He whimpered. With his back arched slightly, the spray of the water hit his neck and shoulder more so than his chest now - and it had definitely gotten hotter. This was worse than it had been before. It took every ounce of his control to force his hands away from the wall. He felt like he was being boiled alive. “Good boy,” George purred, and Harry did it again - he whimpered. Like a weak victim. “Now, when I release you, you will right yourself. You will remain in the shower, under the water, until I decide you’re done. Do you understand?”

“Please -” Harry started again.

“Don’t,” George interrupted sharply, shaking the fist he had buried in Harry’s hair so violently, he threatened to send Harry crashing to the ground. “Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Harry bit out, but his voice was weak and choppy. 

“You will obey me. And do as you’re told. Like a good boy. Do you understand?” George continued, as Harry squirmed agitatedly.

“Yes,” Harry forced out.

George smiled, and then shoved Harry forward, until he was fully beneath the burning spray of water. Harry flinched violently - clearly tempted to once more remove himself from the shower. And George got to watch in fascination, as a look of resilience crossed over Harry’s face. He remained standing there, head bowed, as the water slapped against his neck and shoulders, and back; as the water scorched its way over the turn of his buttocks, and down his legs, inflaming the skin it left in its wake. George made him stand there for a full five minutes, until very little of his skin wasn’t an angry red. 

And then George pulled the trembling boy out of the spray of the shower, and turned the water off. He dried Harry off with a deceptively soft towel almost gently. And Harry stood there pliant. letting the man dry him as slowly and as meticulously as he wanted to. His breathing was still hard, his long curls matted to his face. 

George turned Harry toward him, and tousled his hair gently with the towel and then he tossed the towel aside, and closely inspected Harry. The temperature of the water wouldn’t have any actual lasting effect, that much was immediately obvious. But patches of his skin, the more sensitive areas - like the juncture of his neck and the curve of his ass were so tender, they threatened to develop into blisters. George stroked his thumb over a particularly sensitive looking patch of skin on his neck and tsked, but he didn’t sound exactly unhappy about it. 

“The king should’ve turned you into a proper concubine. Your face is being wasted here,” George mused quietly, speaking almost to himself, as he stroked the rough pad of his thumb over Harry’s cheek bone. Harry grimaced but remained still. “Like a bloody angel,” George murmured, and then removed his hand entirely. 

“Your opponent has requested that your attire be changed for this fight,” George began, immediately onto business. “She’s requested that you wear a shirt.” George handed Harry a nondescript grey t-shirt and a pair of black athletic shirts and Harry quickly dressed himself. The elastic band of the shorts dug painfully into his hips and he had to readjust them to avoid any of the developing blisters. The shirt, while much looser, seemed to agitate his skin all the same. “She’s also requested that your hair be cut, but I imagine your future suitors would disagree with that request.” 

Harry couldn’t clearly remember the last time they’d taken him out of the cell to cut his hair. The curls cleared his chin, and were quickly making their way to his shoulders at this point, but it was too unruly and thick to be easily tied back. He doubted they would be willing to give him anything to tie his hair back with regardless. Harry subconsciously raked his fingers back through his hair, freeing any knots that blocked the path of his fingers. 

“Seems to me that she’s just using these requests as a means to provide you with _humane_ upkeep, which is insulting. Clearly we’ve been taking care of you.” George paused and stared at Harry expectantly.

“Clearly, sir,” Harry said dryly. 

“You are our property after all,” George sniped and then led Harry out of the showers. Harry followed George back to the caged door of the arena’s stadium. During the walk, he struggled with suppressing an unusual, nauseating bout of anxiety. Gemma would be on the other side of this door. He would see her again, for the first time in five years. He would see how she’s grown. She would see how he’s grown. He wasn’t sure which one terrified him more. He didn’t know how he’d grown. He had no access to mirrors. He interacted with no one that knew him before all of this. He didn’t know what his face looked like, or how altered it might be. And it rapidly began to terrify him to finally come face to face with somebody that would see that disparity in his face. The before and the after of it all.

What if he disappointed her?

And then the gate clattered open and Harry was shoved unceremoniously out. He stumbled, almost drunkenly, his face darkening and closing off as the roar of the crowd came down on him like a weighted blanket. Harry kept his eyes fixed to the ground as he continued forward, stopping only once he was in the center of the stage. 

He had to finally lift his eyes from the floor because nobody was moving. He could practically hear the restless movement of the crowd, the idle chatter, the impatient breathing. But Gemma hadn’t moved, and obviously he wasn’t going to move first. So he looked up and froze when her eyes caught his, pinning him to the spot.

Gemma looked older, clearly. Her features had sharpened slightly, but her figure had filled out - with age and what was clearly a well balanced diet. She looked healthy, her long dark hair pulled back and pinned up in an elaborate braid. She wore what could best be described as fancy, but athletic dress. Her trousers were tight, and narrowed down at her calves, baring the skin there. Her shirt was equally tight, but not as restrictive as a corset might have been. Her nails were fairly long, and unbroken - undirtied. If he didn’t know who he was looking at, he would have had no idea that five years ago, she had been a servant right alongside him. He tried to see something on her face - what she had been through, how she had even married a Duke - if it was manipulation, or if she was actually in a loving marriage. Had she been forced into it? Had this been his fault? Or had she really just lucked out and naturally moved above her own station in life? But Gemma’s face was unreadable. The only thing he could get from it was that she hadn’t been heavily scarred on her face. 

He hoped that was the only thing she could get from his face. But then again - maybe he had been heavily scarred on his face, how the fuck was he supposed to know?

Harry made an impatient motion with his hand, and Gemma scowled at him. That look on her face was definitely familiar. “Don’t rush me,” she said lowly. The crowd seemed to lean forward in unison, as if they could hear anything from their distance. They were steadily growing more impatient. It wasn’t audible, but Harry could feel the shift in the air prickling beneath his skin. In a death match, when the stadium grew bored or impatient, it prompted the guards, or the announcer to _spice up the fight_ , usually in an obnoxiously lethal way. While intellectually, Harry knew that wouldn’t be a risk right now, given that it was a charity match and not a lethal fight, but it put him on edge. Because most of the people he killed, he didn’t know and had never met, but this was Gemma. This was the most important person alive to him, and he wanted to protect her from the archaic whims of entertainment.

“I’m not,” Harry said finally, his voice low, and a little rough from the lack of frequent use. “They are.” He inclined his head slightly, toward the stadium seating area. “You’re supposed to hit me now. That’s what they’ve come for.”

Gemma frowned at him, and he didn’t much like that frown. It wasn’t the disappointment he had feared. It was a frown that Louis sometimes wore. A frown that made Harry never want to talk again, because the only way it was put on Louis’s face was when Harry would talk. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he imagined if he just stopped talking, then the frown would never appear again.

“Barbarians,” Gemma huffed.

“Humans,” Harry agreed, and the frown on Gemma’s face became so embedded, he feared it would never disappear again.

Behind Gemma, Harry could see the people lining the front row shifting impatiently in their seats. He didn’t know what the pricing for these events were - he’d never owned money, or had an inclination - or the ability to - attend this form of entertainment, but the occupants in the seats wore silk dresses and velvet suits and seemed to be wealthy and bored, a dangerous combination.

“If you don’t hit me, I’m going to hit you,” Harry warned Gemma slowly, in a low voice. “I’ll be punished if you fucking don’t, so just fucking hit me,” he added, his tone becoming sharper, fueled by the impatience he could practically feel pressing against him. The people sat in the front row were beginning to chatter aimlessly amongst themselves. “Gemma, please,” Harry pressed, but he didn’t dare move forward. Gemma remained frozen, staring straight at him. Her unwavering gaze made him feel like he had weights attached to his ankles, but he was also all too aware that any movement would interest the crowd; get their hopes up. And when Gemma remained unmovable and nothing came of his own movement, because he was very clearly bluffing and could never strike his own sister; not first, not last, not ever - then the crowd would turn angry at that false hope he instilled in them, and he could not be the cause of that. 

Now he realized the event he hadn’t thought to worry about. What if Gemma came here and just refused to do anything this place existed for? What if she refused to fight? What if he couldn’t make this show entertaining? What if she just stayed there, immobile, watching him? They would both be blamed for it. Gemma had no real power, no more than he did. She was a pawn here; he’d known that from the second Louis had told him who he would be fighting. This was a dig at him. Because of the stupid trial. Because his family hadn’t been killed after all, and now they served as ammunition reserves, their aim deadly and true. If the tide of the crowd, and the tide of the money, and the tide of the prestige turned against them here and now because Gemma refused to play a game she didn’t yet understand, they would both be blamed for it, and in that moment, he realized his true fear, because he was now worth a profit, and therefore no longer expendable. But Gemma? He had no way to know how much she was worth to these people. He had no real way to know what actual power the Duke she’d married had - if he had any. In that moment, Harry came to the startling realization that of the two of them, he might actually be the only invaluable one, and that made Gemma expendable. If she were killed here, who would actually care? How many people did she have in her circle now, and were any of them truly on her side? Did she have a Louis? Somebody willing to fight for her right to simply exist? 

Harry had to stop before he gave himself a panic attack. He had to turn it off, shut it down, just stop fucking thinking about any of this. He had to treat it like any other fight. Except Gemma still wasn’t fucking moving, and no other fight had begun like that. By sparing him the treatment he had become accustomed to, she was on the verge of damning them both.

So he finally moved forward. A hushed whisper broke out across the crowd in anticipation. And then he punched the person he cherished the most in the world in the face.


End file.
